WetGeek I have never explored other distros in order to find a replacement for Solus, as I feel the same way about it as you do. I'm just intrigued by what's going on in other distros, by other teams.

The title of this thread ("If not solus, what distro would you be using?") suggests that "a replacement for Solus" is a relevant to evaluation, but I understand what you mean. While "a replacement for Solus" is always in the back of my mind, I look at distros with an eye towards (1) is the distro a good choice as a desktop/working environment for an "ordinary home desktop user", (2) is the distro something I would recommend to my friends (non-technical for the most part) for that purpose, and (3) is the user interface as well-designed and intuitive as Windows, MacOS, Android, ChromeOS, iOS and other major user interfaces, all different but well done. A threshold criteria is design quality -- nobody who is used to any of the "majors" is going to tolerate sloppy, amateurish design for their primary working computing environment.

      tomscharbach The title of this thread ("If not solus, what distro would you be using?") suggests that "a replacement for Solus" is a relevant to evaluation

      @adurante created this thread, and gave it that name. I created the Other Interesting Distros thread, which is more in line with my interests. Still, having used and loved Solus for years, there's understandibly some overlap. If Solus were taken away somehow, and I no longer had it, I'd want its replacement to be as much like it as possible.

        tomscharbach The title of this thread ("If not solus, what distro would you be using?") suggests that "a replacement for Solus" is a relevant to evaluation, but I understand what you mean. While "a replacement for Solus" is always in the back of my mind, I look at distros with an eye towards (1) is the distro a good choice as a desktop/working environment for an "ordinary home desktop user", (2) is the distro something I would recommend to my friends (non-technical for the most part) for that purpose, and (3) is the user interface as well-designed and intuitive as Windows, MacOS, Android, ChromeOS, iOS and other major user interfaces, all different but well done. A threshold criteria is design quality -- nobody who is used to any of the "majors" is going to tolerate sloppy, amateurish design for their primary working computing environment.

        Sometimes I think we BS ourselves, maybe I do. I love threads like these because maybe I pretend to be looking for a cool sidekick to Solus. As a practical matter Win10 is my backup. Do I need a third OS? I'm not a hobbyist.
        Or is the truth that Solus set the bar so high this distro hunt is an intriguing pita. You really want the truth truth? I'm always scared that Solus & Co.will cease to function, pull up stakes, and vanish, and I want a luxurious daily driver like this I can step right into to conduct the business of day to day living.
        [If that awful day comes I will be honest, Bodhi or Bunsen I've enjoyed the most].
        But I very much enjoy others' POVs on distros.

            joluveba In my experience Void boots faster than Solus. That's not to say Solus is by any means slow.

              brent Or is the truth that Solus set the bar so high this distro hunt is an intriguing pita.

              I think that the bar -- in terms of design quality, user interface and useability, ease of use for non-technical users, and quality/stability of the underlying operating system -- is set by Windows, MacOS, and ChromeOS on the desktop, and Android and iOS for smartphone users.

              When I show friends Linux on the desktop, that level of quality (the level of quality that they are used to from using mainstream operating systems) is what my friends expect to see on my Linux desktop.

              Solus and a relatively small number of other distros provide that level of quality -- carefully designed user interfaces, carefully curated apps and a stable operating system -- in short, top-to-bottom quality and ease of use. Most distros, frankly, do not meet the bar.

              brent I'm always scared that Solus & Co.will cease to function, pull up stakes, and vanish, and I want a luxurious daily driver like this I can step right into to conduct the business of day to day living.

              I think that is the point of this thread. If Solus disappears, what would we use instead?

              brent But I very much enjoy others' POVs on distros.

              Me, too. Other POV's point me in directions I might not find on my own.

                    brent the possibility that is just disappears one day is not zero, that's why I keep trying other things. My opinions have changed quite a bit over the years, and I really don't think there's anything as good as Solus. Apt is slow, pacman syntax make no sense (really -Syu instead of up or update), Fedora hates me, and SUSE just never made me feel warm and happy. I'd probably transition to Endeavour at this point and then start hopping again. I might give Gecko another look or Tumbleweed.

                        Brucehankins after eopkg, apt and pacman confusing, fedora hates me too, suse hates me. tumbleweed/gecko is a fan club I always tried to join but would not have me on two computers. that was between an old lenovo desktop and a hand built abandoned gaming rig I don't game on. it's always rejected me.
                        I know that possibility of solus going poof "is not zero" and it makes me nervous. it's as stable as win 7, prettier, snappier, and much more secure....and better than every distro I tested. If the Solus thing goes under I'm staying on the roller coaster of small/independent and I don't know why. My needs are not power computing obviously but I admire vision and authenticity foremost. Your post above is awesome.

                          Hardware issues aside I'd head back to FreeBSD with a Mate hat... Much more work and fiddly but as snappy and sensible as Solus.

                          Brucehankins I really don't think there's anything as good as Solus.

                          Solus brings together a unique combination of a solid, efficient and stable OS layer, high-quality DE layers (my experience is limited to Budgie and Plasma) implemented flawlessly, carefully selected applications targeted at home desktop user, Flatpack, appimage and Snap support, and an intelligently implemented rolling release model. In short, a solid, kruft free, user-friendly, desktop-focused, quality designed/implemented top-to-bottom. Although there are other high-quality distros available, none bring all of those factors together as well as Solus.

                          I've looked at quite a number of Budgie and Plasma implementations during the last year precisely because "the possibility that is just disappears one day is not zero". None of them are as good as Solus. The only two I'd consider at this point as Solus replacements or distros that I would recommend to friends wanting to come over from Windows are Ubuntu Budgie and Kubuntu.

                              tomscharbach intelligently implemented rolling release model

                              You hit the nail on the head. Outside of the same defaults and beautiful default theming choices the team.has made, a curated rolling model with weekly updates. Debian and Ubuntu are stable sure, but they get crusty quick, even if you hop from .04-.10. Arch and Tumbleweed are like a daily firehose of "here's the latest update" and it's a bit like what's gonna break roulette. Solus hits the sweet spot on all the fronts.

                                a year later

                                salexandarz Here I am 4 years later running solus on my old hp laptop and it's working pretty good. Btw, I'm also using arch on Lenovo IdeaPad 5 pro (amd) 😊

                                  Pop!_Os but with an additional repository for having a current Plasma.

                                  I've been distrohopping a lot recently and haven't found anything close to Solus for my usage (Solus have its problems, namely no flatpak graphical support -yet-, Libreoffice-common-dictionnaries not there by default and no Fonts app by default either, but it's so easy to solve and it's not a bug). I think the best distro I've been using apart from Solus is Fedora... but the problem with Fedora is having to wait for at least a month when an upgrade arrives because it's buggy. Solus doesn't have that problem.

                                  When the Solus Troubles unexpectedly hit us, and it was clear that it was not a short-term problem, I settled on a distro I'd beeen very fond of when I examined it for the "Other Interesting Distros" thread.

                                  In fact, I'm still so fond of Sparky Linux, that it's the only non-solus VM that I keep on my laptop, and update along with my Solus VMs every week or so. It's a little behind Solus when it comes to its Plasma version, but it's still quite usable. It's a rolling release that offers updates more often than even Solus does, and everything I ever wanted to install while I was using it was available as a .DEB file. I was able to set it up exactly as I did Solus, it had no problem accessing my NAS, and left nothing to be desired. There's even a friendly and helpful forum, much like Solus'.

                                  So, if Solus went away suddenly (again), I could maintain 99.99% of the same user experience with Sparky Plasma, and do it with very little configuration.

                                    Arch Budgie and maybe Debian Budgie but I need to explore it first

                                    I'll never go back to a "regular release" distro (used Mint, Kubuntu, Pop, and Fedora), that was an unmitigated disaster. Every upgrade something broke. While I could fix my own machine most of the time, half of my friends and family are out of state. It gets old driving 4 hours to fix broken updates at minimum twice a year. I decided that rolling for me was the way to go... tried Arch. That went ok for a few months, then it just started breaking. Everytime I'd update (daily) there'd be package conflicts or something would be missing a dependency, pure unstable hell. All I do is use Steam, Lutris, Brave, and Libreoffice and it just broke constantly. Not to mention Nvidia support on all of these is quite terrible, with all of them at the time requiring copying and pasting random shit off the internet and crossing your fingers that it would work. sudo apt *purge* nvidia is burned into my mind.

                                    I also discovered during this time that I loved KDE Plasma. Cinnamon and Budgie were ok, but man anything Gnome based is super rigid and extensions were the first thing to break with updates. I got the impression that it was the Gnome way or the highway and anything that deviated from what they considered their "desktop experience" they actively tried to sabotage (my opinion).

                                    Out of sheer panic when we went through our dark times, I tested several additional distros in VM's. The only thing that even looked remotely as decent was Tumbleweed. That being said I did cartwheels when Josh made the post about righting the ship.

                                    Solus is stable, Solus is reliable, Solus runs great, Solus has a great team and a great community, Solus is home.

                                      zmaint I decided that rolling for me was the way to go... tried Arch. That went ok for a few months, then it just started breaking. Everytime I'd update (daily) there'd be package conflicts or something would be missing a dependency, pure unstable hell. All I do is use Steam, Lutris, Brave, and Libreoffice and it just broke constantly.

                                      I use Arch is backup system and update it ones a week like Solus. While I prefer how Solus does updates, Arch was fine for me. But I am not really use it daily and I don't use AUR.

                                          Solarmass I didn't use the AUR either. I was able to keep it running for almost a year in a VM, but on bare metal... didn't live long.

                                            zmaint Every distro going have issues just nature of software Solus compared to fedora and others
                                            for dev support I think is above the rest. The last issue we had should speak for itself In our instant
                                            gratification lifestyles now days people need to come to the conclusion it takes alittle time to fix some issues.

                                            Kinda like having a great car you got have great mechanic..

                                            But I agree
                                            Solus is stable, Solus is reliable, Solus runs great, Solus has a great team and a great community, Solus is home.