Heya folks! We're here with another installment of the weekly Solus news!

This week. Grub has been updated to version 2.12. This brings a ton of fixes, as well as improved support for various technologies. There are a couple of things to note about Grub updates:

  1. Grub is only used in BIOS systems, not on EFI systems (these use systemd-boot). Run the bootctl command to determine if you are running a grub/BIOS system. It should show 'Not booted with EFI'.
  2. Grub does not get automatically updated; it must be done manually if desired.
  3. If you have a /boot partition, it must be mounted before doing the manual installation.

To update the Grub bootloader, run the following command after fully updating your system, replacing sdX with the drive (not the partition) that Grub is installed on. Don't hesitate to ask for help to determine your boot disk or when you encounter any errors.

sudo grub-install --boot-directory=/boot/ --target=i386-pc --recheck --force /dev/sdX

LLVM has been updated to 18.1.6. This includes updating Crystal to 1.12.1, ispc to 1.23.0, and ziglang to 0.12.0. Additionally, we are including more tools in the Rust package, and the tools have been moved into the development subpackage (rust-devel). Anyone looking to develop Rust programs can now simply install rust-devel and everything they need will be installed and ready to go.

For the 3D modelers out there, our Blender package now has CUDA and OptiX support! NVIDIA users will now be able to render their Blender projects using their GPU. This should make rendering much faster for people with supported devices.

Kernel-side changes for BCC, or the BPF Compiler Collection, have landed in Solus. BCC is a toolkit for creating efficient kernel tracing and manipulation programs, and includes several useful tools and examples. They are very powerful performance tools that inject code directly into kernel-space. BCC itself landed in the repository last week, but many of the tools didn't work until this week's kernel changes were made.

GNOME Software and KDE Discover are no longer marked as experimental as of this week. If you wish to help us test these applications, install the one you want (gnome-software or discover), and use them as you would the Software Center. There are 4 issues to track the testing process:

This is a significant milestone, and we are glad to open up testing for everyone!

Last, but certainly not least, we'd like to give a shoutout to the people that have been steadily working through the repository and adding homepages to package.yml files, doing cleanup, and adding monitoring.yml files. We started this initiative at the end of September 2023, and since then, almost 1700 packages have been cleaned up, the majority of which have been done by community contributors. This work may not be glamorous, but your efforts are greatly appreciated. Thank you all very much!

Security updates

For security updates this week, we have Grub. The jump to 2.12 means that a long list of security issues were fixed. Some web browsers have also been cherry-picked during the week for security fixes.

General updates

If you want to see the full list of changed packages, click this link.

That’s all for this week, folks! Tune in next week for more Solus news.

How did the sync go for you?

This poll has ended.

    There were several problems for me on a Plasma laptop. One has been happening for the past several updates, but it's easy to fix, and I figured it would be by now - but it hasn't. On a reboot after the update, Bluetooth is turned off. The solution, of course, is to plug in a dongle for a non-Bluetooth mouse, and connect things again. Easy, but annoying.

    Another one to solve, once I knew the solution, is the panel that masqerades as a dock. It starts out about 3/4 " long, with icons that are just colored dots. After I figured it out, finally, all it took was clicking on "Edit enter mode" in the context menu for it to assume its original size and (most of) its original content.

    The last issue was that one of the three solitaire games I play was missing from the "dock". I needed to go to favorites, and right-click on the game's icon, then copy it to the screen. From there, I could add it back to the "dock".

    These problems were all fixable, but still, they were all annoying. I'd love it if they were gone in some future update.

      Still unable to connect a Bluetooth keyboard to my Xfce laptop. It puzzzles me how anybody else can.

      To update the Grub bootloader, run the following command after fully updating your system, replacing sdX with your boot partition: (or is it just the drive?)

      Um... So my main drive (what my windows-self wants to call my C: drive) has multiple partitions on it. Which one do I point this at, the EFI System one or the Linux Filesystem one?

      EDIT: I figured it out, it was the nvme drive.... and that i'm not using grub so my question was moot.

      How do I know whether if my Budgie is using Grub or some other alternative?

      Any potential dangers or drawbacks that we users need to be aware of first, before we update such a fundamental piece of software like Grub?

      WetGeek There were several problems for me on a Plasma laptop. One has been happening for the past several updates, but it's easy to fix, and I figured it would be by now - but it hasn't. On a reboot after the update, Bluetooth is turned off. The solution, of course, is to plug in a dongle for a non-Bluetooth mouse, and connect things again. Easy, but annoying.

      Does this happen on every reboot? If so it's a years old bug. Delete ~/.config/bluedevilglobalrc and reboot and it should save the setting again.

          Updated and all went smoothly.

          GNOME Software is working pretty nicely so far, even when I was using it at my own risk in experimental state. It picked up tonight's sync correctly and even automatically downloaded the updates in the background pretty much immediately. Offline updates work properly too.

          I am encountering a very mild nit which I'm not sure if it's packagekit or G/S itself. When installing a eopkg application, the download / install progress bar just says 'Preparing...' instead of showing an overall install progress bar. eopkg's do install correctly, it's just not visually showing progress. Flatpak install progress behaves as intended. I can report this on the issue tracker if you need me to.

            ReillyBrogan Delete ~/.config/bluedevilglobalrc and reboot

            Thanks - that fixed it. I'm still hoping for some help with the "dock." Replacing the missing solitaire icon seems to have survived a reboot, so it's possible that I accidentally removed it myself. But this is how the dock looks after I click on the colored dot that represent Spectacle (so I could take the screenshot).

            After I took the screenshot, it went back to 12 colored dots representing the icons. And after I clicked to "Enter edit mode," all back to normal.

              EbonJaeger Last, but certainly not least, we'd like to give a shoutout to the people that have been steadily working through the repository and adding homepages to package.yml files, doing cleanup, and adding monitoring.yml files. We started this initiative at the end of September 2023, and since then, almost 1700 packages have been cleaned up, the majority of which have been done by community contributors. This work may not be glamorous, but your efforts are greatly appreciated. Thank you all very much!

              I've noticed the mass deprecation of useless debris thru devtracker everyday for months. Incredible. Feng Shui is what the Japanese call it and it means, in one sense, clearing the clutter out of one's life, letting go of artifacts rarely used---this purging of the dead-weight is a mechanism to moving forward freely in one's life.
              As a forum user I, too, want to shoutout "to the people that have been steadily working" on clearing the way forward. It's cool and necessary.

              EbonJaeger This is a significant milestone, and we are glad to open up testing for everyone!

              I agree. Fond of SC out of sentiment but time to move on. Sky's the limit. I'm really proud of all you and all of this.

                    JTCPingas I can report this on the issue tracker if you need me to.

                    Please do, so there is issue we can track. We kind of know it, the progress bar work on packagekit backend is still ongoing (Joey knows about it more).

                      • [deleted]

                      • Post #16

                      Still unable to launch Element without forcing xwayland.

                      hmm this grub stuff
                      1 i mounted the boot partition in gnome disks
                      2 i ran sudo grub-install --boot-directory=/boot/ --target=i386-pc --recheck --force /dev/nvme0n1
                      output: grub-install: error: attempt to install to encrypted disk without cryptodisk enabled. SetGRUB_ENABLE_CRYPTODISK=y' in file /etc/default/grub'.
                      3 added that as instructed
                      4 ran the install command again and got

                      Installing for i386-pc platform.
grub-install: warning: this GPT partition label contains no BIOS Boot Partition; embedding won't be possible.
grub-install: error: embedding is not possible, but this is required for RAID and LVM install.

                      anyway, i took a chance and rebooted and it worked fine

                      edit: why grub is isntalled on my desktop but not on my laptop i do now know

                      How do I check whether if my Solus Budgie is using Grub or something else?

                      I am on Budgie 4.5, on a clean install using the v4.5 ISO.
                      Ryzen 7, Asrock AM5 motherboard, and a NVME disk.