Up-to-dateness of the ISOs

Axios

rothom https://getsol.us/categories/releases/
But has a few updates as its developement is going forward.
Best to do updates right after install

rothom

Thank you !!!

Cheers!

Sebastian

Solus 4.4 was released in July 2023. Right after Installation you need to update Solus. You can't install additional software from the repository without updating anyways.
This initial update will certainly take at least one Gb.
Solus provides weekly updates for your installation.

diagnostics0

Solus 4.5 is soonish™ it looks like, if you can wait. Otherwise, the updates are about 1.6Gb at the moment.

WetGeek

rothom I have a very slow Internet and would like to avoid updates beyond 1 GB

Wouldn't it work for you to start the update just before bed, and wake up to a fully updated system?

rothom

WetGeek

In many cases I even do it this way

murbert

Updates will be over a GB 3 weeks after the new ISO comes out. Maybe a rolling release is not the right way for you?

rothom

murbert
I am extremely satisfied with Solus. I even accept longer waiting times for updates.

Harvey

Yes a 4.5 release is planned. But it sounds like a rolling release distribution may not be for you a major stack update to any desktop would very quickly pass 1gb in downloads.

rothom

Harvey

If updates are bigger, then they are bigger. I asked out of curiosity how up-to-date the ISOs are.

Sebastian

Okay. Then I suggest for you to wait for the 4.5 release. Probably end of this month, no guarantee, though (my personal estimation. not an official statement of any kind).
As discussed on the Solus Support Matrix channel, Solus 4.5 will switch to a 1GB minimum size boot partition (UEFI) if you select auto-partitioning during install. Currently UEFI partition size is around 512 MB. There you might run out of space if you have current and lts kernel and several OS installed using same UEFI.
If you partition manually during install, then you can also go for it now.

WetGeek

Sebastian Solus 4.5 will switch to a 1GB minimum size boot partition (UEFI)
@TraceyC

I'm quite alright with that change. Personally, I already set EFI partitions on all my systems to 1 GiB, and have done so for quite some time now. I'd like to suggest that the automatic partitioning also create a SWAP partition equal to the size of RAM in the system (or at least, offer that as an installer option). That would allow every Solus user to take advantage of the many benefits of hibernation.

I readily admit I do have a personal interest in that. It would mean that I could use automatic partitioning every time I create new Solus VMs, or reinstall Solus on any of my hardware. And most importantly, if it were an installer option, users with extremely limited storage available could continue as they now do.

penny-farthing

Sebastian

I had set my EFI System Partition to 750 Mio (instead of the minimum 512 Mio recommended).

How can I change it to 1 Gio, knowing that I'll have to reduce the one currently set for Solus to 42 Mio (I need to recover 250 Mio)?

I've tried using a USB key with the Solus 4.4 ISO image and the GParted application: although I can reduce the size of my Solus partition in ext4, I can't do it on the EFI System Partition (in fat32), which remains grayed out.

What should I do? Is there another application on Linux, or even a terminal command, that can do this?

On Windows, the EASUS Partition Master application is recommended for this kind of operation, but you need to go through the paid version.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

Sebastian

WetGeek Yes, I have vaguely in mind that I had to add a swap partition manually after install last time. Is this still the case?

WetGeek

Sebastian I had to add a swap partition manually after install last time. Is this still the case?

Yes, unless that's scheduled to change with 4.5. As things now stand, I believe it still needs to be done manually.

I personally prefer to create it before I install the OS, but it could certainly be done afterwards, with just a little additional work in the partition manager (e.g., shrink the root partition (/) and use the unassigned space that was freed up to create the swap partition). The way I prefer to do it, I just creat EFI, SWAP, and / partitions to start with, and assign SWAP and / in the installer.

joluveba

Sebastian Yes, I have vaguely in mind that I had to add a swap partition manually after install last time. Is this still the case?

I had the opposite problem. I don't remember if it was Solus 4.1 or 4.2, but I managed to install it without a swap partition, since I preferred to have a swap file. You can easily make it bigger, smaller, erase it etc, on the other hand, doing the same with a swap partition is very risky. Anyways, when I installed Solus 4.3, I couldn't find the option to install it without a swap partition, because auto-install creates a swap partition by default. A few days ago I reinstalled Solus 4.4 (I had fled to Void Linux, a great distro, but the nostalgia of Solus was too strong and I caved in), and then I realized that, in order to not have a swap partition, you have to create partitions manually, and then install. Unless there is some other way.

I think that having a swap partition/file is redundant with having zram, since zram works as if it were a swap. Am I wrong?

Sebastian

penny-farthing I don't really know the answer to this, maybe someone of our fantastic team members does. Personally, I always try to avoid those kind of operations, especially with the boot partition. There always is the risk that you run in a situation where you can't boot your system any more.
My guess is that your EFI partition is the first partition. in order to enlarge it, you have to shrink the following partition at the beginning. Or at the end and then move the whole thing. I would'nt do it. And I certainly wouldn't do it without any backup.
So, if you don't have any trouble with your EFI partition, don't touch it. I personally would rather reinstall the system than fiddle around with partition sizes afterwards.

brent

WetGeek @Sebastian also worth noting re: swap. the activation of zram post-install. I don't consider my OS complete anymore without activating it. https://discuss.getsol.us/d/9305-swap/10

ReillyBrogan

I feel like Zram was already in 4.4?

brent

ReillyBrogan arrrrgh forgot/flashed back to 4.3

ReillyBrogan

joluveba I think that having a swap partition/file is redundant with having zram, since zram works as if it were a swap. Am I wrong?

You still need a swap partition/file if you want to do hibernation. It can also still be beneficial even with zram because zram can only compress so far. For example, if someone has an machine with 8GB of RAM then Zram might make that about as usable as a10-12GB RAM machine, but it's not going to help beyond that. Swap can still be useful at that point.

Generally though if you have a swap partition/file then the best option is to disable zram and enable zswap instead. Zswap integrates with a real swap device and will move memory pages that don't compress well or aren't being actively used to the actual swap device in order to leave more memory for more actively used things. Zram doesn't do that so sometimes the kernel will inefficiently use it if you have a real swap device as well.