If not solus, what distro would you be using

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.

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!

N1X3L 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.

Gecko Budgie is one of two permanent installations** in my Gnome Boxes collection. Gecko Budgie is permanent because it is the only distro I've found that gives Solus Budgie any competition at all, for all the reasons you've pointed out.

The Budgie DE is well designed, but an older version from an outdated repository, and has real limitations compared to Solus Budgie (e.g centered taskbar only, top bar, limited ability to customize). I hope that as the Budgie project gets underway and develops, the Gecko version of Budgie (and other non-Solus versions) will be brought up to Solus standards.

Avidgamefan 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.

Gecko is spartan by design. To be blunt, openSUSE is a monster -- the ISO is 4.5 GB, most of the included packages irrelevant for ordinary use -- while Gecko is curated for ordinary users, with an 1.7 GB ISO. It is a bit on the spartan side, but I prefer spartan to overloaded.

WetGeek 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!

That's my impression, too. My canary is a Dell Inspiron 3180 with an AMD A6/R5 4GB setup. Solus Budgie is fast and efficient on that minimal rig. Gecko Budgie is almost as sluggish as Windows 10. Not quite, but sluggish enough to notice.

The update process is also arduous. Following openSUSE practice, Gecko updates replace the entire set, not just updated packages as Solus and most other distros do. I'm updating Gecko as we speak, and 1189 packages are being updated. That's a lot.

Although I would probably call it a day if Solus disappeared and use Windows 11 or (maybe) buy a MacBook, Gecko Budgie is a solid distro, Budgie issues and update issues aside, and a good candidate for Solus Budgie replacement.

==================

** The other is Zorin 16, which I keep on tap because I have been helping a fellow-geezer newbie deal with Linux, his son having convinced him to move to Zorin rather than replace his Windows 10 computer in 2024-2025. A bad decision, in my opinion, and I won't be at all surprised to see my friend on Windows 11 before this is all over.

Axios I think a lot Linux Distros would do themselves good to scale back a bit and refine what they have
might be surprised at what would happen in the Linux world.

Linus Torvalds observed years ago that Linux on the desktop was not likely to gain market share unless and until the community developed the self-discipline to focus on a standardized desktop and a limited collection of high-quality software that integrates and interacts end-to-end within working environments.

I think that Torvalds was right. As much as we complain about Windows, MacOS and ChromeOS, Apple, Microsoft and Google have each succeeded in developing a working environment that is out-of-the-box functional end-to-end internally, for the most part. The Linux community has not. The current state of "Linux on the Desktop" -- seemingly endless branching, forking. splitting off, upstream/downstream bottlenecks, "dependency hell" and so on -- reminds me of an old lawyer joke -- "Ask four lawyers a simple question and you will get nine answers."

I remember the numerous predictions (circa 2009/2010 or so) that Ubuntu was going to bring Linux to the desktop -- predictions of a 25% or so market share. It didn't happen, of course. Outside the corporate environment where IT support is readily available, Linux on the desktop is confined -- still confined -- largely to developers and tinkerers. That's not going to change unless something changes in the way Linux DE's and applications are developed.

Overall, the best that can be said right now about the state of Linux on the desktop is that it is usable.

I am reminded of how low that standard actually is for ordinary users like my geezer-friend trying to use Zorin 16, a relatively simple, straightforward Windows-like distro, to do simple things that he is used to doing in Windows 10. It is always something, and more often than not, a struggle to get and keep his environment working.

My friend isn't dumb. He's a retired mechanical engineer who was a senior lead on the team that built the largest machine currently in use on planet earth. But he just wants his computer to work, and doesn't want to become an OS technician. Linux isn't going to do that for him.

I think that those of us who have been using Linux for years and years forget how difficult the Linux desktop can be for ordinary, non-technical users. Until that changes, Linux desktop is not going to gain much market share, whatever happens in the Windows, MacOS and ChromeOS world.

brent Turning my back on MS was the finest thing I ever did for my personal life.

Don't let your significant other read that ...