Heya folks! It's Friday, and that means it's time for the weekly Solus roundup!

We have a lighter list of updates this week. Much of the team's focus recently has been on finalizing plans and tools for the upcoming Usr Merge. There'll be a lot more detail on that subject Soon™️!

The current branch of the Linux kernel this week has been updated to 6.10.6, and the LTS branch to 6.6.47. With these updates, a lot of hardware for GPIO, I2C, and mux have been enabled.

The NVIDIA Beta driver has also been updated to the latest in the 560 series, version 560.35.03. This has a few fixes and improvements:

  • Fixed a bug, introduced in 555.58, where some DVI outputs would not work with HDMI monitors.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause KDE Plasma Shell to freeze while hovering over or opening applets when running in Wayland compositor mode.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause the display to freeze when presenting windows using Wayland direct scanout on multiple monitors.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause kernel crashes upon attempting KMS operations through DRM when nvidia_drm was loaded with modeset=0.

Activate Linux has been added to the Solus repository this week. If you've ever had Windows deactivate itself and show a watermark in the bottom corner of your screen and thought: "man, I wish I could get that on Linux", then this package is for you! Yes, really, this actually exists.

Our Solus Cleanup Crew™️ has been hard at work this week bringing the repository up to current standards:

Most of these tasks are beginner-friendly, and can be a great way to learn Solus packaging. We invite anyone that has the time and inclination to join us!

If you would like to join:

  1. Join Solus Packaging Room on Matrix
  2. Read and practice our packaging documentation
  3. Submit your first Pull Request. We recommend doing the homepage task
  4. Follow along the review process until your PR gets merged
  5. Continue on contributing!

Security updates

All the Chromium-based web browsers had security fixes this week to address CVE-2024-7971. Make sure to install these updates!

General updates

The full list of updated packages can be found here.

That’s all for this week, folks! We'll be here same time, same place next week for another roundup of the news!

How did the sync go for you?

This poll has ended.

Firstly, Seeing these weekly updates just keep on coming through consistently and with clear communication is much appreciated and surely a big undertaking each week so a big thank you to all involved!

So with regards to this sync, I previously had issues with no audio but happy to report this sync brought audio back. I'm on current kernel.

Edit: LTS kernel also keeps audio functional.

Possibly the most pointless application ever 🙂

Thanks for all your work.

I sometimes hear people saying Solus repos are a bit lacking, but actually the only thing I've missed that isn't really obscure (and isn't in other repos either !) or commercial is 64tass. I'm away for a week next week, but when I get back I'll see about learning to package things myself. That might be a good start point, as it's a doddle to install, so presumably would be a simple thing to package.

Yes all is well and I have working audio now without having to downgrade kernel

I've been so busy this week that I only just now got a chance to install this update. Although it's a small one, something in it seems to have fixed all the mysterious problems I had with hibernating and Bluetooth last week.

I've only installed it on my main laptop so far, but I'm hopeful. I updated, started 10 or so applications on their virtual desktops, and then hibernated. When I woke up the laptop, everything was exactly as it should be. And there were no issues with Bluetooth, either.

So, a lot of crap fixed, apparently, and I've given up my plans to do a system re-installation out of desperation. Hoping that the rest of my upgrades work as well! Later ...

    WetGeek I've only installed it on my main laptop so far, but I'm hopeful.

    My Xfce laptop and all four Solus VMs are done now. And likewise, no new issues at all.

    _______(hibernate)________

    Before I started this message, I had filled the virtual desktops with their usual applications, and after typing that first sentence above, I hibernated this laptop. When I woke up the laptop to finish the message, everything worked perfectly. So I'm very happy this morning.

    And it's only an hour until the Formula 1 qualifications will start. Wheeee!

        WetGeek I hibernated this laptop. When I woke up the laptop to finish the message, everything worked perfectly. So I'm very happy this morning.

        And it's only an hour until the Formula 1 qualifications will start. Wheeee!

        now that's a day off to a good start 🙂

          After update and reboot my laptop got stuck on a load of Warning: dracut-initqueue: timeout messages and a flashing screen.
          Fixed it by changing the BIOS setting for my SSD from RAID to AHCI and everything was well again with the minimum of fault finding.
          Update on Solus Plasma using Discover which also updated the BIOS the day before.
          This could have been down to the new kernel handling my hard drive in a different way or the BIOS update messing with some settings. My laptop certainly started fine with an updated BIOS and failed after the update.
          I hope this helps anyone else with a similar issue.

          Seems less CPU use and lighter on RAM on my 2008 machine. Must be the new kernel. Also took a risk in installing NVIDIA 470 drivers for my video card which wouldn't boot before, now all ok.

          Fine and dandy on Plasma.
          I may try out driver 560. I didn't had any luck with 555.

          I used Solus some years ago and really enjoyed it until one update crashed the os completely. So I used other distro's for a few years and only came back to Solus recently. It's still the best to use in my opinion.
          The update was taking place in the background as usual when my computer just shut off. It came back but now there is no dock at the bottom
          Any clues on how to get it back? Thanks

            tectile What desktop environment? If Budgie then Right click on the desktop -> Budgie Desktop Settings -> Create a new panel.
            Click on the panel -> Settings -> Dock mode

              ok thanks I found the dock setting this time. Doesn't go full width but it's usable

              Cherry-picked discord 0.0.66

              EbonJaeger unstickied the discussion .