Hello everyone, thinking of moving to Solus - Couple questions before I do

linuxadv

Hey there
I've been a long time Linux user but mostly on fixed/LTS releases. So it's a new experience I want while keeping my work(web dev/video editing/etc) and hobbies(games, etc)the same, and by that I mean working of course. As far as I know, Solus is a rolling release but not bleeding edge which sounds good to me, it also seems modern and doesn't have tons of useless packages like some distros do.
Plus, I like the name and logo if that's relevant 😀

Anyway, I'd like to ask a couple things:

As it's a rolling release, keeping your data backedup is obviously something to do(in any OS anyway). Is there a restore system software like timeshift, or a way of making the native package manager give me the output of programs so I can save them into a file and download them all again, at once, if something ever goes wrong?
No evil intentions behind this one but as everyone know, Linux has had distros and more distros and lots ended up dying. How's the situation on Solus in the sense that can you see it still running in 5 years from now?(You guys got a crystal ball I know).

That's about it.

Brucehankins

linuxadv some far wiser people can tell you about backups and restores. As for do I get the sense that it will still be going in five years? Yes! Not just the core devs, but the global maintainers, packagers, and everyone involved is amazing, and I don't see this distro going anywhere anytime soon.

kyrios

linuxadv No evil intentions behind this one but as everyone know, Linux has had distros and more distros and lots ended up dying. How's the situation on Solus in the sense that can you see it still running in 5 years from now?(You guys got a crystal ball I know).

The distros that vanishes are usually created by a sole person and they die within a year or two.
Just ignore these, natural selection will operate.
Actively maintained distros that exist for 3 years or more can be considered as safe.

WetGeek

linuxadv Is there a restore system software like timeshift

Not timeshift, unfortunately, but restic is very easy to use. Try a forum search with the term "restic". There's no GUI like timeshift (at least, I don't know of one) but restic is trivial to use from the command line and many have spoken very highly of it.

EDIT: Actually, I use restic to back up my own home directory, but I don't know why it wouldn't work for system files as well. Since Solus will re-install all the system files in a few minutes, and I generate a list of all installed packages that's saved to my home directory, and I can use that list to reinstall all packages, I've never felt the need to backup the whole system.

davidjharder

Hi @linuxadv, welocme to the Solus forums!

Solus uses eopkg as a package manager. eopkg does not have a restore function, but it does have eopkg list-installed which shows every installed package. That list also includes packages installed on every new Solus installation. Personally, I keep a list of packages I install that I want as part of my own installations.
Solus has been around since ~ 2015 and has no intention of going anywhere. Solus continues due to the hard work of many volunteers.

Staudey

davidjharder To expand on point 1, eopkg li | cut -d " " -f 1 would give you a list of all installed package names, without any additional columns. Note that this includes all base system packages too.

Regarding the long term outlook for Solus: The situation seems pretty stable. Solus has already survived for many years, which included events like the previous main developer leaving. The Core Team has a number of big plans for the future and activity on the dev tracker is healthy. I personally also have no intention of leaving Solus behind in the foreseeable future (but I'm just a small time package maintainer).

EbonJaeger

WetGeek I generate a list of all installed packages that's saved to my home directory, and I can use that list to reinstall all packages

This sounds interesting to me. Is the list (re-)generated for every package install or uninstall, or do you just generate it before a full reinstall?

brent

EbonJaeger Brilliant--as am I. That makes two thieves...

WetGeek I generate a list of all installed packages that's saved to my home directory, and I can use that list to reinstall all packages, I've never felt the need to backup the whole system.

I'm getting more serious about backups lately, due to previously perishable hardware, and I like this approach.

WetGeek

EbonJaeger

I assigned an alias in my .bashrc file(s) that I can execute before I do a backup, which comes before I do an upgrade. Thus the backup contains the list of packages to feed to eopkg to restore them.

alias copyPackages="eopkg li | cut -d ' ' -f 1 | tr '\n' ' ' > /home/jerry/InstalledPackages"
alias restorePackages='sudo eopkg install $(cat InstalledPackages)'

Just change the destination for copyPackages to your home directory, and other than that you should be able to use these as-is.

EDIT: I should have mentioned that copyPackages runs in < 3 seconds on my laptop. I've never needed to use restorePackages, but it's probably not much worse than a weekly upgrade.

EbonJaeger

WetGeek Thanks! That's really handy! I'm just gonna steal that, if you don't mind... 😁