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  • Post #92

Thank you so much Solus Team, you did it again!

That KDE-Plasma release...I'm speechless.

The technical part: The installation was really fast, as you mentioned in the blog post and I had/have no issues at all, even after sudo eopkg upgrade. Also, sudo eopkg check reported no broken packages in the system.

Decided to try the Plasma version to try something new after using Budgie for a long time. Apart from some inconsistent themeing for GTK/Qt applications (which I fixed to switch global theme to Breeze Dark), I have found it to be absolutely... LOVELY! During the years I have liked a lot of aspects in KDE in other distros (maybe especially Dolphin and the close-to-perfect window handling), but always stumbled on some weird behaviour. But now after a few days of using KDE I can honestly say this is the first time I can consider switching. Will continue to use it for a while and of course keep an eye on what happens with Budgie/GNOME as well.

Other comparable rolling-release distros like Manjaro and similar are also great, but they just do not have the stability of Solus. I really like the sometimes conservative approach which (finally) gives me a modern Linux desktop without compromising with stability. Sometimes I have been a bit frustrated when missing things, but I always managed to sort it out in the end.

So thank you team for making my Linux development machine fun again! (and a side note: Please please please dont get rid of the sane defaults and great experience with the 3rd-party applications in Software Center. I have heard that these will be removed in the next version and replaced by snaps or similar, but native beat snap every time for me).

    tobcro
    Sane defaults will always be a thing, its kinda Solus's motto.

    The third party section is a horrible mess and has not been accepting new additions for as long as I can remember, you're the only person I've ever heard refer to it as a great experience. However my understanding is for items that don't have a snap package such as Google Chrome the third party section will remain.

    An to be clear because I've seen this confusion before. Snap packages are NOT replacing all native packages this has never been a thing that was even suggested. Universal package formats such as snaps / flatpaks / appimages allow you to install software Solus has rejected for inclusion in the repository or potentially can not include due to the software's license forbidding distribution (The latter is why Third Party exists).

    The third party section of the software center is just downloading and repackaging .deb files provided by upstream to an .eopkg it can not even update these packages automatically, you have to update third party apps manually one by one or use a tool such as eopkg3p

        Harvey I understand that snaps etc are not replacing native packages and I also understand that it is a lot easier involving different universal package formats than doing some magic .deb extraction thingy that is only used in Software Center. But for me - again, for me - I have no overall good experience with snaps, not really in any distro I have tried. Some packages work fine, some just don't. If it was not graphical issues (inconsistent themeing etc which is something I truly hate) there have been weird behaviours with file management etc. So I almost always have to end up building the applications myself, which is totally fine - but - the third party repository in SC allows me to just go in and press a button to accomplish the same thing for at least some of these applications. Thats why I like it so much.

        And as far as universal package formats goes...

            tobcro

            Yeah i just mentioned it because every time its brought up someone reads it and interprets it as native packages are going away.

            Snap support on Solus has gotten better recently but whatever suits your needs best I understand. I avoid universal packages where possible too.

                Harvey honestly the quality of the snap seems to be (and I suppose this makes sense) independent of the distro. My dual boot laptop has solus and zorinos on it and at one point fedora silverblue and the snaps that gave me trouble on one system, tended to give me trouble on the other. For example bitwarden's snap has always worked flawlessly. Now chromium on the other hand.....

                I would also say the opposite has been true in my experience with flatpaks. Some flatpaks just seem to not like certain distros.

                    Harvey An to be clear because I've seen this confusion before. Snap packages are NOT replacing all native packages this has never been a thing that was even suggested.

                    Well, we did say that we would be converting Third Party to Snaps. But in the category of "easier said than done" I think it's more likely that we will use ypkg instead.

                    tobcro I understand that snaps etc are not replacing native packages and I also understand that it is a lot easier involving different universal package formats than doing some magic .deb extraction thingy that is only used in Software Center.

                    Snaps aren't easier than repackaging debs. You have to spend a significant amount of time working with upstream to get them included in the Snap Store, even after managing to build one. If they already exist, maybe. It was a long long time ago that Ikey made that announcement and we were hoping that Snaps would have better integration and selection by now. I can't tell you exactly how we will handle the next chapter of Third-Party's existence, but I can tell you that the build system it relies on is getting nuked from orbit.

                          adurante, @Harvey is referring to recent changes we made to improve AppArmor integration and cgroups for snapd. Not the actual experience of individual snaps.

                            Slightly off topic..maybe...but.. WOW, new releases sure boost forum traffic.

                            Thanks! :-) I've just update, and also read the release notes - and I just have to say - I LOVE THIS OS!

                            btw, I'm a dedicated fan of budgie and will definitely keep it on my main box, but I'll have to scrounge up another computer to try out Plasma. It's a happy chore.

                              paulvg I just went the more expedient route of trying out the new Plasma in gnome boxes. Very nice indeed :-) It's not enough to pry me away from budgie ...but almost enough to.

                                This is a compliment I am giving, and hoping Core will think so: having an older system, I noticed no significant changes. Visually it's crisper. Performs crisper. Libre Writer launches a heck of a lot faster, thank you.

                                Me not noticing any major changes is a compliment because the nature of operating systems, all platforms, is a butterfly effect where major/minor changes often have many unintended consequences.
                                The opposite happened here! Thanks again.

                                Lucien_Lachance You should partition manually (e.g. using gparted) before running the installer in order to be allowed to created the EFI partition on the disk. Then in the installer you can select to use the whole disk and partition automatically, and it will allow to create the EFI partition there. The installer doesn't handle multi-disks systems very well.

                                    polomi , can you explain this again please. Not very clear to me what you mean. Thanks! :-)

                                        elfprince Sure. Be advised that you will lose data, so make backups. 🙂

                                        Boot the live ISO, and run GParted. Re-create a GPT partition table on your disk, add a 550 MiB fat32 EFI partition and an ext4 partition for the rest, though details don't matter at this point because the installer will overwrite it. Then once you created the partitions, you can run the installer, select this disk as a target, and select to use the whole disk with automatic partitioning. Then in the step where it asks where to put the EFI partition, it will propose to create a new one on that disk.

                                        That's what I had to do in order to have the installer offer to put the EFI partition on the target disk, instead of on some other disk.

                                            DataDrake Snaps aren't easier than repackaging debs. You have to spend a significant amount of time working with upstream to get them included in the Snap Store, even after managing to build one. If they already exist, maybe. It was a long long time ago that Ikey made that announcement and we were hoping that Snaps would have better integration and selection by now. I can't tell you exactly how we will handle the next chapter of Third-Party's existence, but I can tell you that the build system it relies on is getting nuked from orbit.

                                            Very satisfied with this answer, thank you for taking the time to explain 🙂

                                              polomi Then once you created the partitions, you can run the installer, select this disk as a target, and select to use the whole disk with automatic partitioning.

                                              You realise automatic partitioning will just wipe all the partitions you just created right?

                                                  I decide to eliminate Windows (after 20 years of boring running!) and Ubuntu from my laptop as I tried Solus with live CD. It blows me away. Best OS I'ver tried. Thank You for your great job! I've to learn as much as possibile now.