On January 9, 2024, I saw the Solus 4.5 release notification on the blog site. I immediately upgraded my desktop and primary laptop PCs, both of which dual boot the Solus-Plasma edition with Windows 11. Next, I downloaded the Solus-XFCE edition for installation on my older Dell Inspiron 5555 laptop PC. I have been waiting for the Solus-XFCE edition to be released for several months. It's labeled as a beta release, but my overall experience belies that. It feels like it's been in development for much longer than it has. This new edition is very well integrated, polished, and refined, to the point that it looks as elegant and cohesive as my Plasma edition DEs on my two primary computers.
The only complaint I can come up with is that the installer (still) sets the boot menu timeout to zero seconds in all situations. This is fine if Solus will be the only OS on the computer, but in a dual/multi-boot scenario, it should be set to some greater value (perhaps 5?) so the boot menu can be seen at system start/reboot. If detecting an existing operating system during the installation process is impractical, perhaps an option asking "How long do you want to wait before booting the default OS?" (or something to that effect) associated with a drop-down selector offering values (perhaps) ranging from zero to nine could be added. Of course, it's up to the installer (Calamares) maintainers to decide how/whether to handle that, but I wanted to voice my opinion on this matter.
All in all, Solus is perhaps the best distribution I've ever used. I want to thank all of you who are involved in its development and maintenance for all your hard work, and I want you all to know that each of you makes a very real difference for all of us who use it.
Ernie
