I would probably run Void. It's an little close to what Solus is, so i would stick to it. Maybe Arch too.

    I'm surprised no one said they'd be totally lost without Solus yet.

    I know I'd wander back to the Ubuntu arena myself for work and Manjaro for personal play.

      If not EndeavourOS, then probably Fedora would be my next backup distro.

      opensuse maybe. i cant imagine if solus will be die soon.

      codewizard1975 I'm surprised no one said they'd be totally lost without Solus yet.

      I'm not about to say that I'd be lost without Solus, but I'd miss it. I used Ubuntu 2006-2017 for work, and then, freed of Canonical, went looking for a distro I wanted to use. I found Solus Budgie and I've stuck with it, and will continue to do so. I've looked at any number of distros in Gnome Boxes during the last couple months, and I haven't seen any I'd be willing to adopt for daily use. I'm 75 and not willing to put up with unstable, unintuitive, poorly-designed distros just for the sake of using Linux. If Solus Budgie disappeared, I'd use Windows or buy a MacBook.

        I am free spirit. There is no way that I am willing to suffer under Windows' thumb, or Apple's $$$ price tag. All else fails, I will try some of the light Linux distros, or even FreeBSD/OpenBSD.
        I shall not be assimilated, and resistance is NOT futile! 😀

          I last responded to this question on the cusp of the COVID-19 pandemic, and much has changed since. If not Solus, I would use GeckoLinux. It's a curated and polished version of openSUSE, with out-of-the-box functionality. I've been trying it out, and it gives me Solus vibes, because it offers a rolling-release model, a Budgie desktop environment, and the kind of user-focused experience I want in a daily-driver distro. All that being said, my experience with Solus has been fantastic, so I intend to keep using and supporting it.

            elfprince as a backup linux OS I've been--lately--auditioning all Independents. (distrowatch has a filter you can set for an indy search). If there was no Solus, I'd have to say I would never use a fork.
            I haven't tried them all, but 3 indy's are pretty cool/unique to me. Not solus-level cool...what's unique about you is you could fall back on BSD. that OS takes some brain cells, I tell ya

                N1X3L All that being said, my experience with Solus has been fantastic, so I intend to keep using and supporting it.

                I'm glad to see you mention this ... financial contributions are important way to support Solus for those of us who cannot contribute time and talent as a member of the Solus team.

                  codewizard1975 I'm surprised no one said they'd be totally lost without Solus yet.

                  More or less, that is my case, I'd be almost totally lost without Solus. There are other cool rolling release distros, but Solus is the one that gives me less trouble. Antergos was great, but it doesn't exist anymore. Manjaro always ends up exploding in my computers. PCLinuxOS is one of my favorite distros, but I have lots of little problems whenever I have used it. Geckolinux? I couldn't make heads or tails of it. Void Linux looks great, but installing it is a little too difficult for my low Linux skills.

                  I have uninstalled Solus several times to install and try other distros, and I have always regretted it, always came back crying to Solus. Once I used the Anarchy installer to install Arch on my laptop, when I rebooted I had lots of little annoying glitches, whenever I solved one, another one arouse, and a Jiminy Cricket little voice in my head repeated "In Solus this wouldn't happen". One of these little glitches was the final straw, and said to myself "Screw it, I'm going back to Solus"

                  Perhaps, perhaps, some day I will try Openmandriva Rolling, Openmamba, or Void Linux. Perhaps

                    Been using Solus Budgie since November 2016 as my main system.
                    For almost 3 years the OS has been running on a System76 Thelio Desktop.
                    A wonderful daily use platform that is so practical to use.

                    I am also involved in other Linux communities.
                    On my 2 Alienware M15x laptops I am running:
                    a) PCLinuxOS Trinity - a quirky but fun rolling distro. Also have this distro, Plasma version, on a testing PC as I am an official tester.
                    b) PeppermintOS - rejoined the project with the new release, and am a Trusted User in their forum.

                    Unsure at this stage which of these 2 other distros could replace Solus on my main system.
                    I know for sure though it would be a rolling distro.

                      I did a Linux / alternative OS marathon in the last 2 weeks with about 40 of the top 100 linux / BSD distros from distrowatch plus Haiku and OpenIndiana. I stay with Solus because it fits my taste and needs best.

                      I started to use Linux in 1995 with SuSE Linux and since then, i have a soft spot for this distro. openSuSE Tumbleweed is a rock solid rolling release.

                        brent if you're looking for something to mess with, learn, and have some fun....check out Arco Linux. It's Arch step by step basically until you build your own .iso.

                            I tested several distros on live USB, and I think Kubuntu was the one I preferred, aside from Solus Plasma. (Solus boots up and shuts down faster, and I vaguely recall getting some random "hangs" on Kubuntu, although I can't recall for sure. Solus is just solid.)

                            I find that the Plasma DE is pretty easy for me to drop into, as a Windows user. I'd like to try KDE Neon, as another alternative.

                            I had trouble getting used to Elementary OS, but perhaps it also isn't well suited to my laptop's mouse. Also not the best for someone used to Windows. Looks nice.

                            For those who like OpenSUSE, I found a variant called Gecko that seems to add a few things, like improved fonts and such. Seemed a bit spartan for my tastes, but I guess it was OK.

                            Most of the distros gave me reasons to not prefer them. The ability to run live USBs for testing is just a great feature of Linux.

                              Avidgamefan For those who like OpenSUSE, I found a variant called Gecko that seems to add a few things, like improved fonts and such.

                              Having been an openSuSE user since something like v6.0 (until I met Solus), your mention of Gecko got me intrigued. I decided to create a Gecko VM and take a look around. Installation was very smooth and straightforward, as was connecting to my network printer. Yast is still Yast, although I was surprised that no repository I could add included Vivaldi. As the greatest browser on the planet, that seemed like quite an omission to me. Not even Pacman included it.

                              I was able to browse to vivaldi.com using Firefox and download their .rpm file, which was immediately loaded into Yast for installation. I haven't looked at Tumbleweed for quite a while, so I don't know whether that feature's the same, or it's a Gecko improvement. I remember loading external packages being a little complicated back in the day.

                              Anyway, I did get Vivaldi loaded and configured, and decided to take a new look at its email client. Seems much improved over the earlier versions I'd seen, but still not a replacement for Thunderbird.

                              Overall impression, operation of Gecko felt like driving a school bus compared to Solus' sports car experience. I had totally gotten used to Solus' speed and responsiveness, whereas I'd previously thought openSUSE (and now Gecko) was very normal for Linux. It's interesting to see what they've done with the old lady, but she's certainly no threat to young Solus!