tomscharbach ** The other is Zorin 16
I'd like to like Zorin but Snaps
If not solus, what distro would you be using
tomscharbach 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.
I can't comment on MacOS or ChromeOS, but Microsoft Windows definitely wasn't "out-of-the-box functional end-to-end" for me. That's 80% of the reason I even switched to Solus. It might work reasonably well most of the time, but so does Solus; and the times when Windows doesn't work in a major way you can basically give up hope on trying to fix it, while with Solus/Linux I can look at the source of the problem (literally 
) and often find/implement a solution.
Case in point I recently had to read out a bluetooth pairing key from my Windows installation (in a deep, hidden part of the registry). Somehow Powershell refused to let me access it, and after trying workarounds I found on the internet for half an hour or so, I had to resort to launching Solus to read Window's own registry, using a readily available tool.
Similar experience for e.g. printer driver installations. On Windows: Download this 500 MB setup file, try to get through the setup without installing five additional programs you do not want, and in the end it might work. On Solus: plug the printer into my PC, print. (I know I've been lucky in that regard when I read about other people's printer troubles though).
Of course there are rough edges with Linux/Solus, and we should keep those in mind and work to smooth them out. Every time I stumble over something like that I do my best to try to remedy situation in a way so that the next person has a smoother experience. If I can't fix it, I at least document it (e.g. bug report) and leave enough information to enable someone else to improve it. This way I hope that we can some day live in a world where there is no doubt at all that Linux provides the best "out-of-the-box functional end-to-end" experience 
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Axios I put together a i5 solus gnome for mom sooooooooooo simple (the reasoning was less work for me..lol)
but she never turned it on or used it once,so I upgraded her to win7 dell laptop she uses it all the time..lol
Gnome is too different from the Windows paradigm, if she was used to Windows no wonder she didn't want to use Gnome, I don't feel comfortable with it either. I would've gone with something closer to Windows desktop like KDE Plasma or Mate. If you customize KDE Plasma to resemble Windows, I bet she couldn't even tell the difference.
The best metrics of usability for me is my wife, for her a computer is like a washing machine, she wants it to work, stand out of the way, and that's it. My wife often stores files (PDF's, JPEG's) she wants to use on the desktop. If she used Gnome, I can imagine her protests when she noticed she can't do that, "this Linux thingie sucks, I can't save files on the desktop, it's broken". She doesn't care that Gnome isn't supposed to work like that, that's what she's used to do and that's it. This story has a happy end, with Solus KDE my wife hasn't protested a single time. What she can do in Windows, she can do here.
tomscharbach 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 haven't used Zorin (I tried it once with an USB, the desktop is very beautiful), but I have used Linux Mint, another Ubuntu derivative, and although I liked it, I know that "it is always something" and "a struggle to keep your computer working" feeling. I know I must sound like a fanboy, and this is the Solus forum, but I finally settled in Solus because I don't feel like I have to struggle against my computers to make everything work.
By the way, did you try evangelizing your friend about the virtues of Solus? I could not shut up
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joluveba Gnome is too different from the Windows paradigm, if she was used to Windows no wonder she didn't want to use Gnome, I don't feel comfortable with it either.
That's exactly why I've never recommeded GNOME to anybody. You practically need to have grown up using it in order to feel comfortable with it. Based on my own wife's experience with her laptop, I'd certainly add Budgie to the list of DEs that are easy to grasp for anyone already familiar with Windows. That's what's on her laptop now, and has been for years.
And let's face it, folks, LOTS of people's first personal computer was a Windows machine. (Mine was a VIC-20, then a Commodore 64, then a Kaypro 4-84 CPM machine, but I'm not most people.) Many, if not most, of today's PC users have never used anything but a Windows machine. So it's no wonder that a DE like GNOME woud make the change from Windows to Linux very difficult for them.
I use Plasma, as I've said here often, but that's because at the time I changed from my beloved Budgie, there were just a couple of reasons for the change, and those reasons still exist. For example, limiting the number of workspaces to 8 didn't fit my usage pattern that I'd developed over decades of work experience and home use.
On Windows, I'd used a little free software tool called VirtuaWin to provide workspaces. Even in Windows 11, Microsoft still hasn't come up with a multiple workspace strategy that's as good as it is on Liinux or by using Virtuawin on any version of Windows. And at home, every Linux distro I'd ever tried offered multiple virtual workspaces (because UNIX did so, long before.).
And currently, my laptop has a full HD screen and our TV is a 4K model. Budgie only offers 1x or 2x options for scaling output. I use 1.25x to comfortably use my laptop, and 4x to be able to read text on my TV from across the living room. That leaves Budgie out of the running, but Plasma solves both problems.
joluveba By the way, did you try evangelizing your friend about the virtues of Solus? I could not shut up
Quietly.
I use Solus on my railroad museum computer and am not shy about my opinion that Solus Budgie is a near-perfect desktop environment. I have used Budgie "with him" plugged into a monitor while we together search for parts and equipment, so he has seen it in action many times. He knows that I am very familiar with Zorin 16 (explored Zorin 16 as a Windows 10 replacement for a specific use case at the museum) and that (although I think Zorin 16 is a fine distro) I personally prefer Solus by a mile.
But I have not pushed him away from Zorin toward Solus.
The reason is threefold: (1) I don't want to insert myself between him and his son (no good can come of that), (2) he and his wife both use the computers (a desktop and a laptop), so selecting a distro is not up to him alone, and (3) the desktop is connected to peripherals and uses applications that are supported by/for Ubuntu/Zorin, but not Solus.
The bottom line is that, although I think that his son made a mistake pushing him toward Linux rather than waiting a couple of years, purchasing new equipment and migrating to Windows 11, I think that Zorin 16 is an appropriate choice for he and his wife at this time.
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WetGeek After all, Windows is pre-installed on nearly every laptop and desktop by their OEMs, and it has been that way for so long that there's a lot of inertia built up.
The question then becomes what it would take to pre-install Linux on laptops and desktops for consumer users.
Dell, for example, offers a line of business/developer "Linux Workstations and Laptops" -- XPS, Latitude, Precision -- that come with Linux (Ubuntu and/or Red Hat) pre-installed, and offers excellent support for Linux pre-installed systems, but Dell does not, to my knowledge, offer Linux pre-installed on any of its consumer lines.
What would it take to motivate Dell to expand Linux installation and support into consumer lines? The consumer market is significantly different from the developer market (less sophisticated users) and the business/enterprise market (little or no professional IT support in-house). My view is that the Linux desktop will have to significantly improve Linux "user-friendliness" and significantly reduce post-OOB support needs in order (support in the business/enterprise market is relatively inexpensive for OEM's, but more expensive in the consumer market) for that to happen.
In short, I don't think that the Linux desktop is developed enough for use by consumers, and will, unless something changes, remain the province of developers, tinkerers and enterprise-level business users.
While I agree with Torvalds about the things that need to change in order for the Linux desktop to develop into a consumer product, I'm not sure that widespread adoption by consumers is a good thing or a goal the Linux community should be seeking. It may well be that the optimal market share for Linux desktop is 3-4% or so, staying out of the consumer market for the next few years, anyway. If Torvalds is right about what it would take to expand the Linux desktop market, it would likely come at the expense of @elfprince's "Choices and flexibility, a big plus in Linux's favor."
Having a unified desktop on Linux would be a mistake, imo.
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tomscharbach The question then becomes what it would take to pre-install Linux on laptops and desktops for consumer users.
In short, Solus. We need to get folks to stop thinking of Linux as a free version of AT&T Unix, but as something much better suited to consumer use. There's no reason why users who install Solus Budgie can't be up and running from the start, in less time and with less frustration than it took them to learn Windows the first time.
That will require the major distributions to start to target the non-technical user, as Solus does, as opposed to the computer scientists who had to deal with Unix and it's four-foot-long rack of user manuals.
OEMs and large PC retailers are in business for their executives and their stockholders, many of whom are the same people. We need to convince them that they can do even better if they would offer more "user friendly" OSs at a better price. That's going to require more Linux distros to begin targeting ordinary folks, not just techno-tinkerers as they do now.
Maybe a distro could actually offer both? SUSE does that with SLES and SLED for commercial developers and Tumbleweed and Leap for consumers. Red Hat does it with their enterprise products and Fedora. But even their consumer products still require too much of a learning curve for average Windows users.
Solus comes damned close to being perfect for consumers, but it's just not big enough to take on Windows by itself. However, as Windows continues on its efforts to become Apple, I think more opportunities will appear.
No large retailer would ever consider dropping Windows "cold turkey" at this time, but if they offered a Solus alternative for their consumer products, eventually their sales might convince them that it was a good move. And maybe they'd stop making it so hard to install competing OSs on their Windows machines.
It's not going to happen overnight, but Microsoft didn't get where they are overnight, either.
MintSpider How did you control the fan on the Thelio? I have an R2 but without the S76 firmware/power management, the fan is constantly on. I put up with it because Solus is so efficient but every so often I put in a Pop USB and the silence is very inviting.
I tried out ARTIX-Linux with LXQT-Desk, which is a very lightweigt KDE/Plasma-QT-Desk, and Artix came with RUNIT instead of Gnome's-SYSTEMD.
I managed to install it on an USB-stick.
And woaw, Artix is superfast: booting from my slow USB 2.0 stick only needed 30 seconds.
The whole installed system only consumed 4,5 GigaByte memory on the stick.
And the desk was running with 450 MegaByte RAM only.
Compared to that, Solus felt slower because of using Gnome's-SYSTEMD and much more RAM and memory than LXQT.
With Artix i didn't manage to get along without having a software-center though, and wasn't able to install more than Firefox. so i deleted the stick again...
A Solus-Version of LXQT would be super nice 
And maybe even one without SYSTEMD
If you want to get rid of all the Gnome-GTK-stuff anyhow, LXQT might be a good option?
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WetGeek In short, Solus. We need to get folks to stop thinking of Linux as a free version of AT&T Unix, but as something much better suited to consumer use. There's no reason why users who install Solus Budgie can't be up and running from the start, in less time and with less frustration than it took them to learn Windows the first time. ... As far as I am concerned, Solus Budgie is better suited for consumers than any other distro in the Linux universe. ... No large retailer would ever consider dropping Windows "cold turkey" at this time, but if they offered a Solus alternative for their consumer products, eventually their sales might convince them that it was a good move.
I think that Solus Budgie is a near-perfect Linux environment for consumers -- designed specifically for consumer users, efficient and free of bloat, fast on low- to mid-end computers, suitable for laptop use, an elegant and sophisticated front end on par with the Windows and MacOS design quality, and so on.
With that background, I want to try to think through the issues that need to be confronted and the issues that need to be solved in order to turn potential into reality. To focus the discussion, I want to look at a single OEM (Dell), a single consumer product line (Inspiron) and a specific laptop size (15" FHD), coupling that with Solus and Budgie. That limits the focus to three primary stakeholders -- Dell, the Solus Project and the Buddies of Budgie project.
Looking at Dell, I want to focus on all-Intel implementations of the Inspiron line, specifically a reasonably priced (400-600 USD), reasonably well-equipped, mid-level Inspiron 15-3000 series of laptops:
Dell need do nothing special to prepare the laptops themselves for Linux use, because the all-Intel specifications are well supported for Linux by Intel and other component manufacturers.
But Dell will need to make significant investment to support the computers: (1) develop support pages and other infrastructure to deliver BIOS, firmware and driver updates to Solus Budgie users, (2) train support staff to understand and resolve solve Linux/Solus/Budgie support issues, (3) develop tools (similar to SupportAssist for Dell's Windows consumer products) to allow users to keep the computers up-to-date and healthy, (4) develop, in cooperation with the Solus Project and Buddies of Budgie project, a marketing program for Dell Solus Budgie Inspiron computers, (5) obtain necessary licensing and copyright permissions (similar to those worked out with Canonical and RedHat) to allow Dell to modify Solus and Budgie as needed to develop and deploy Dell-based tweaks/tools supporting the Dell hardware (specifically tools/tweaks to manage display resolution, battery life and processor use), and (6) cooperate with Dell-supported peripheral manufacturers (mice, keyboards, printers and so on) to ensure that drivers are included in the Dell pre-installed distribution and maintained for a reasonable period thereafter. None of it will come cheap for Dell.
Looking at the other side of the coin, the Solus Project and Buddies of Budgie projects are going to have to make very significant changes to make this work, and it isn't clear to me that the changes will be acceptable to either team.
When Dell sells a computer to a consumer, Dell undertakes to support the OS (provide drivers and so on) after purchase. In the case of Windows, Dell's support coincides with Windows EOL schedules, as is the case with Ubuntu and (I assume) Red Hat. To make that level and length of support a reality for Solus Budgie, both the Solus and Budgie projects will need to make changes to ensure that both Solus and Budgie will remain viable and in production for a minimum of 5 or so years on a rolling, going forward basis, and (almost certainly) give Dell some level of control over the direction of Solus and Budgie development. Dell will not and should not commit to either Solus or Budgie without a reasonable level of confidence that both Solus and Budgie will remain viable, remain compatible with Intel hardware and the Dell configurations sold by Dell, provide, on an ongoing basis, a consumer-oriented distro of quality at least that which exists now, and keep Solus and Budgie up-to-date.
I'm not sure what form those assurances would take, because neither the Solus project nor the Budgie project is structured like Canonical and Red Hat, with significant financial reserves, professional developer teams, and contractual commitments to/from suppliers and business/enterprise customers. But I am sure that neither the Solus project nor the Buddies of Budgie project could continue to operate as usual, if for no other reason than Dell would demand that both develop professional, paid, full-time development/maintance teams and find a way to fund those teams before Dell commits. Dell and other OEM's got seriously burned by Conexant's abrupt abandonment of HD Audio drivers, and you can bet that Dell is not going to depend on a small community of volunteer developers headed in who-knows-what direction.
Last but not least, both the Solus project and the Buddies of Budgie project are going to have to bring Solus Budgie up to speed in some respects. A small example from this thread -- Dell 15" FHD displays are set to run at 125%. Currently, that isn't possible under Solus Budgie. This is something that comes to mind, but I am sure that there are other improvements that will need to be made, as well, to get Solus Budgie up to speed
WetGeek That will require the major distributions to start to target the non-technical user, as Solus does, as opposed to the computer scientists who had to deal with Unix and it's four-foot-long rack of user manuals.
I suspect that Dell (in particular) and other major OEM's (in general) will offer Ubuntu, if anything, as a consumer Linux operating system. I think that because Canonical is a strong company and Ubuntu has a long track record. But Ubuntu and other major distributions -- Fedora, openSUSE for example -- are offshoots of server and cloud-based services, and I doubt that any of them are going to develop distributions targeting non-technical users. I'm not sure where any of this is headed.
BTO A Solus-Version of LXQT would be super nice
If you want to get rid of all the Gnome-GTK-stuff anyhow, LXQT might be a good option?
Two things:
- A Solus edition without systemd is extremely unlikely. It would mean an enormous additional effort to maintain both systems, for little to no benefit (plus of course the already considerable effort of maintaining another DE). Also I personally see no reason for NOT using systemd.
- It's the Budgie project that wants to move away from GTK, not the whole of Solus. Now that Budgie is a completely separate project the GTK-removal has even less to do with the OS itself, and will most likely only affect the Budgie edition. There will, for the foreseeable future, always been a e.g. Gnome edition, which of course means including everything GTK.
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jppelt I don't actually "control" the fans, but have no noise issue at all.
I recently updated the firmware, and sent in a report to System76 as their instructions did miss a step.
Here is what I sent them:
Updating my System76 Thelio bios was fun......
Since my main OS is Solus, I had to follow the 'Updating on Other OS's' section of https://support.system76.com/articles/system-firmware/
Basically booting from a Pop!_OS live USB and entering a few commands.
However no firmware update was showing.
Searched the web and found this:
Had to start and enable the firmware daemon.
System76 Thelio-R1 is now bios updated.
No actual support required but informing you I had to go that extra step to enable firmware updates.
MintSpider I don't actually "control" the fans, but have no noise issue at all.
When the two fans in my Dell laptop come on (for a few seconds), that doesn't bother me at all. It just confirms that a temporary situation is being taken care of appropriately.
WetGeek you guys must not use Google Meet or Microsoft Teams much. Fans at full throttle all the time.
Brucehankins you guys must not use Google Meet or Microsoft Teams much
Nope,never had a reason to use either one. Probably a good idea, now that you mention it.
It's the Budgie project that wants to move away from GTK, not the whole of Solus. Now that Budgie is a completely separate project the GTK-removal has even less to do with the OS itself, and will most likely only affect the Budgie edition. There will, for the foreseeable future, always been a e.g. Gnome edition, which of course means including everything GTK.
We can also add that
- MATE also relies on GTK
- Tons of applications in the repo are GTK-based
- Budgie won't move away from GTK in a few months
- ...
Efforts for running away from systemd would be just wasting time to replace something that works instead of using it to do something more useful, especially on a small project.