kyrios I see what you are getting at, bro! I still don't agree with you, though, that Solus should be recommended to 'first timers'. However, I understand that you have a different opinion and I respect that. Salut, mon amigo! 😄

P.S. I did not mix up professionals and newbies. I do believe that we were referring to entirely different subsets of professionals, though. That might be the cause of the mix up. Thanks a lot, man! This was educational.

    Again we come to the unifying theme "it depends". 🙂 After reading most/all of this I think I'm still sticking to my original position - highly depends on that particular user's requirements.

    You really need to interrogate the individual to figure out what they're going to be doing. From there the answers should lead you to a type of distro. Probably more important for sophisticated users with requirements beyond browser/LibreOffice, to make sure there aren't any must-have deal breakers which require software outside of the repo.

    Still planning on having the parents using Solus by default for next PC build, probably with a Mint or Ubuntu "backup" option just in case. Just put an extra browser or two on there, make it easy to get to LibreOffice, should be good to go.

    For the most part it's hard to think of good reasons Solus can't meet 90% of common user requirements. Maybe gaming/Steam is a common blocker? Haven't looked into that yet.

    8 months later

    Justin It's all fun and games, until stuff start crashing or freezing. Zorin is solid for novices.

        HolySoap I'm new to Linux and Solus was the best out-of-the-box experience, except the multi monitor support of budgie.

        Wow! I standardized on Budgie after Mate couldn't handle my dual monitors. No problem with Budgie here.

            WetGeek
            I assume he wants per monitor panels which Budgie does not support yet

              I install it on my daughter laptop and she use it without problem, easy to use i don't think there is problem for windows users

              11 days later

              WetGeek Why digging out such an old post of mine when nothing has changed since?

              Tell me how to get a Taskbar/Dock on other monitors except the primary one, please. Same for different Wallpapers per monitor without any other software involved.

              • They pulled of Hydrapaper (have to use the Flatpack now) from the repos because of some dependencies and refuse to add Superpaper because of a master.zip (the Dev is such a nice guy maybe he is willing to support Solus natively)
              • Docker and Latte is no option.
              • Budgie is based on Gnome and Gnome has an option to duplicate at least the Dock to other monitors, so why not copypasta of that option and expand it to the taskbar.
                • btw. Raven only opens on the right side of the monitor, annoying when want the trigger on the left side
              • I know they work on it with Budgie 11.

              The only two DE's that support multiple monitors are Plasma and XFCE, but:

              • Plasma is bugged when you have task icons on more than one monitor (Latte Dock can solve that more or less if you want a Dock)
              • Plasma hogs to many resources and is buggy overall
              • XFCE is perfect for multiple monitors (so its basically the only option) but looks so dated like Windows 2000

              I still don't understand why Solus has 3 different Gnomes (Budgie, Gnome and MATE) and the new addition Plasma. I Get it for Budgie, Gnome and Plasma but why MATE instead of XFCE?

              Hopefully nobody gets offended, and those complains coming from a stupid end-user who has no knowledge about coding or Linux overall.

                  HolySoap Plasma hogs to many resources

                  I remember reading recently that Plasma is one of the leanest mainstream DEs and even leaner than XFCE now...

                    HolySoap Budgie is NOT based on GNOME. It's built using GTK3 and has GNOME applications.

                    Docker is a container platform and Latte is a dock which only works on Plasma. There is plank in the repository if you're looking for a dock that works with Budgie.

                      I've never used linux on a PC, only for servers. This is my third day on linux and I chose Solus distro and I can say, it's really really easy. Even thought I had some minor issues, asking here brought me answers within a couple of hours. As a fairly new solus user I must say it's amazingly easy to use, would recommend to anyone that wants to switch to it.

                      I am a long time windows 10 user that is fully accustomed to the Office 365 ecosystem. Solus is my first Linux and I have been using it in the last two weeks. So far, my Solus froze one time because I opened too many applications.

                      I was actually eyeing for Zorin because of a recommendation from a colleague. He showed me their beautiful landing page and I was sold immediately. I can say the same with Elementary OS and Pop!OS.... Just visit their websites and you will know what I mean. They are neck-and-neck in DistroWatch ranking. Solus is more stable. But to be honest, I chose Solus also because its name sounds familiar, professional, and reliable.

                      Installing Solus was a breeze in my Thinkpad. No hiccups and everything works out of the box. Challenges arisen from configuring the gestures, DE, and keyboard shortcuts. I learned that I should not try to mimic win10 UX for the sake of my muscle memory. It is important for first time users to try to understand and accept the default settings in Solus (and Linux). Yet, the process of configuring forces me to learn the terminal. At this stage, guidance from experienced users is needed.

                      Office 365 in desktop is far too superior to LibreOffice. Its online version is not a fair substitute for those who relied on complicated MS Office functions and tools. For this reason, I am still dual-booting to taper-off my attachment to the MS ecosystem.