Brucehankins Pop and MX were the longest running auditions I held at weeks...but not really there. When I was brand new, a linux newborn, I did my research and fancied myself a red hat/rhel-type user. Seemed to agree with me. But I was not smart enough to get it installed at all after several attempts! Then a light bulb went off: "why don't I look for a distro that isn't forked from anything? just independent w/their own philosphy?".....

    People have their favorite non-Solus distros -- for whatever reasons -- but I personally classify Linux distros into two categories: Solus and Non-Solus. It's hard for me to say what I'd be using if not for Solus, because I can't imagine not using Solus.

    At 74, most of the folks who create and maintain Solus are considerably younger than I am, so I'm pretty sure that I'll be able to use Solus on all my computers for the rest of my days! And I find that comforting.

    i think id dive in the the arch world now, probably endeavour. liked opensuse tumbleweed a lot but i just dont trust the packman repos

      GermanTux just that i had 2 very odd experiences. i dont know for what caused it though. but i would feel uncomfortable doing online banking etc.
      it was probably nothing, but as i said, you gotta feel comfortable and im not

        I'm along the lines of @WetGeek but with the latest post IRT to direction of Budgie vis a vis Gnome, I tried Bohdi Linux on my experimental laptop. Quirky but cool little distro. Still trying to figure it out but super friendly community.

        Distros I am currently using:
        Arch/Garuda
        Arch/Manjaro
        Arch/Salient
        Debian
        Debian/KDE Neon
        Debian/Kubuntu
        Debian/Kubuntu on ZFS
        Debian/Linux Mint
        Debian/Ubuntu Unity
        Debian/Zorin
        Fedora
        Fedora/CentOS Stream
        Gentoo
        openSuSE
        Slackware/Salix
        Void
        GhostBSD


        You know what they all have in common? They support advanced filesystems with compression, de-duplication, and snapshots; cron; and generally support stateful configuration so hardware quirks only have to be compensated-for a single time.

        It might be tempting to write off my complaint as being that of an advanced long-time Linux user who likes things to work the way they did back in the day, but I'm absolutely not. I've only been using Linux on a daily basis for 2 months. The distros I listed above are the ones that didn't fight me while I was setting them up to work the way I want them to. (okay, Gentoo was a pain in the ass, but only because it doesn't do anything by itself, not because it tries to prevent the user from doing things.)

        Anyway, if you're looking for recommendations, I recommend Kubuntu, Manjaro, or KDE Neon. Those are near the top of the list on DistroWatch for a reason, as I discovered firsthand over the past couple months.

        brent : Solus looks the same as any other distribution with KDE 5 Plasma installed. Just select the Breeze Twilight theme and install a wallpaper of a misty forest, and you'll have the same look. Done and done.

          4 months later

          Likely Mint or Puppy, and only be using them for checking emails and doing online chores once every day or two. I am currently still using Mint for streaming foreign videos in the living room; it's so rarely used now that I haven't bothered changing anything. Manjaro used to work okay for streaming videos (I also installed Manjaro on my customers' computers who couldn't afford the cost of Windows), but Manjaro got buggy after some updates, and I haven't invested the time to see how the latest version is doing.

          My current setup includes 3 computers: Solus, a tweaked Windows 8.1 that was an online business computer (rarely used now), and an offline security PC with Office 2010, (plus an XP hdd for when I want to play old games).

          At present it is looking like I may soon have only 2 computers: an online Solus and an offline Solus. If I go Solus offline and could no longer use Solus online, then I'd likely choose Puppy for online use.

          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!

                                          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.

                                                  You know I was reading this thread yesterday and decided to go linux looking yest and you know what
                                                  I didnt come across anything that really floated my boat. But I installed Solus on that little ideapad other than
                                                  my absent mind it all worked turned it on and ahhhhhh like fresh air..lol

                                                  I will do as I have always done with win7 will download drivers ect ect ,Image disks for all my computers
                                                  and try make sure I have everything to make it last another 10 years...haha

                                                  Windows 10 never impressed me and I wont go above win7
                                                  I think alot Linux Distros would do themselves good to scale back abit and refine what they have
                                                  might be surprised at what would happen in the Linux world

                                                  And you know its about the same with apple I wont go above Mojava but that being said If I had to pick
                                                  one if Solus was gone prob be another apple Just for the fact that it doesnt give me any problems may not
                                                  agree with what they do but apples are pretty stable and most major companies have drivers and software for apple.

                                                  Linux is secondary for me at this point in time But Solus has made me use it more and more so thats a good thing
                                                  and that will continue because of the direction software and these companies are going.

                                                  Sometimes greener pastures and the other side of the fence are not the best..lol

                                                  Ahhh...Done Rambling

                                                    tomscharbach Gecko Budgie is one of two permanent installations** in my Gnome Boxes collection.

                                                    I just went with the default Plasma installation, as that's what I use in Solus. The menus, settings, etc, are very familiar to me. I probably could have done well with Budgie, but when I tried installing that as a second DE using YaST, I ran into an unending list of conflicts to resolve, and to me it wasn't worth the time. Maybe later.

                                                    Given the quaity of the rest of the distro, I would assume they did a good job with Budgie as well.

                                                      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.

                                                          tomscharbach

                                                          I, too, agree that Linux isn't ready to challenge Windows for the desktop, but I think the main reason for that is merchandising, not that distros like Solus are impossible for reasonably bright individuals to use. 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.

                                                          Solus would get my vote for an out-of-the-box desktop and laptop OS, as it comes pre-configured with a great email client, a very good browser, and a reasonably complete office suite that's quite compatible with Microsoft Office documents. Home users, and office workers like order-takers, accountants, document writers, secretaries, receptionists, HR workers, and just about anyone else who doesn't need to develop or support Windows software could be quite happy with a distro like Solus.

                                                          One would expect developers creating Windows applications, as I did for decades, to do so on Windows machines. Database developers would probably need something more like SLES, but that's still Linux, as are most servers these days. For business offices in other industries, Linux could save the businesses the cost of Windows (if OEMs would offer Windows-free configurations for enterprise customers). OEM licenses are cheap, but Linux is even cheaper.

                                                          In short, I guess I'm just more optimistic about modern Linux capabilities and "user friendliness." especially with Solus. Sure, there are distros that I consider junk, but no one is forced to use those. Not while Solus is available for free.

                                                              tomscharbach 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.

                                                              It (linux) was one hell of a learning curve for me. But then again, so was DOS when I was a kid. I see your argument about having to dumb linux down for the masses as the only way to grab a paying market share. That would require, yes, a unified desktop or cohesive commitment across forks. Half of these DE's belong in the trash anyways (I'm looking at you XFCE🙂). But I LOVE having a choice.

                                                              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.

                                                              I disagree here. When you are the only game in town, a virtual monopoly, then your "success" was by default and really not offering the world anything beautiful and functional. Although I do like the Apple aesthetic better. All pale to Budgie, ironically. Turning my back on MS was the finest thing I ever did for my personal life. I find Chrome repugnant-looking. The Opera of the 90's was the last browser I truly enjoyed looking at but Brave is great on the eyes. Browsers are a means to an end, anyway. But, again, I LOVE having choices.

                                                              If there is a unified Linux vision that makes a serious run at a market share will all the choices we are used to disappear? (rhetorical)

                                                              You waxing philosophical rubbed off! Sorry to ramble.

                                                                    tomscharbach I totally remb and understand on your comments.
                                                                    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
                                                                    (Dunno guess I am drunk..j/k)
                                                                    Everybody here have made some valid points depending on how you look at it.
                                                                    30 years of dealing with ppl coming in the door my perspective and confidence is alittle different.