Thank you Solus team (& how I got here)

[deleted]

I feel like Solus OS saved my life. After ditching Windows and distrohopping for weeks I lost complete hope in ever having a stable OS on my home PC. I tried Ubuntu and its derivatives, and they were fine for a time, but I just recently discovered the difference between point & rolling releases. The thought of continuously having to reinstall an OS on my PC throughout its life to not be out of the loop terrified me. It completely turned me off of Ubuntu, Mint, Mx, Pop, & Elementary. So I tried Manjaro in all its flavors. There have been many nights where I've made a final decision and set up my desktop, feeling very confident that Manjaro will be my endgame main driver, only to have the DEs break on me just days into a clean installation. Every single time, without fail. The default desktops were also very ugly in my opinion. But I do credit Manjaro for introducing me to my newest favorite DE, Budgie. I read somewhere that Solus has a reputation of being a pretty stable rolling release distro, and I was really turned on by the idea of it being made from the ground up alongside my beloved Budgie, so very I was eager to try it.
First of all, it's gorgeous out the box. First distro where I didn't have to change the default font size, there is no in-your-face branding, there are beautiful elegant looking themes and a simple layout, nothing looks out of place and not much configuring was even needed for taste. All I really did was move the panel to the left. There's less bloat here than a Manjaro "minimal" installation. It doesn't have that "goofy" "bubbly" look every other distro has. It's the only OS I've used that feels like it was intended to be used by human beings instead of a business, or a sheep. (plus I could reliably disable mouse acceleration from the default DE, big woo!) It seemed too good to be true at first- fast forward 2 months, and that fear of booting my Linux PC into a broken desktop is completely gone. I love Solus. I'm proud to use it and it makes me excited to be using my computer like never before.

Infamous711

I also had the similar experience to yours. I was really frustrated with using windows as it almost always used up a lot of my ram and cpu and I hate those windows updates that takes sometimes 30 minutes to 1 hour to update. So I looked up is there any better alternative of windows that I can use and then I found linux. I setup an Ubuntu vm and used it for 2 weeks, then I started to do distrohop. After ubuntu I switched to linux mint, zorin os, elementary, etc..etc.. But I was not liking the fixed point release model of ubuntu and its derivatives. So I moved to manjaro but for some reason it almost always broke. Then I tried endeavouros and I liked it, but still I had many many problems. So finally I found out that there is a linux distro that is not based on ubuntu or arch and is also a rolling release which also had stability. So after that I used solus kde and my god was this so much better than ubuntu or arch etc..etc.. It had a rolling release model and it had stability. And I don't actually mind the repo being small as there is flatpak and snap support. Now I am using Solus not on a vm, but on my real hardware (on both of my pc and laptop) and I am loving it.

Also I would like to say, thank you so so much to the solus devs and contributors for making and maintaining this awesome OS.

brent

Infamous711 I was really frustrated with using windows

--that's how the journey starts

[deleted] Solus is my PC's home, forever.

--and that's how it ends🙂

[deleted]

More to this
Out of curiosity, and after seeing everyone everywhere post about it, AND after spending most of my life toying with the idea, I spent about a week and a half staying up learning and installing Arch Linux. I got to the point to where my dummy-laptop setup was super minimal perfectly functional and exactly like I wanted, journal clean of errors and configured perfectly for my hardware. (I take full responsibility for everything I learned as the Arch forums absolutely tore me to shreds when I asked for help. The wiki is the best documentation of any distribution ever released but because of the DIY nature you're on your own when it comes to technical issues, they prefer to critique your search criteria rather than actually assist.)
While I admit it was fun learning new things, I don't see myself using it as my daily driver on my main desktop. I have work to do, I should not have to worry about crucial issues on my daily driver that require manual intervention or digging too deep. If Arch was on my main desktop I would be so paranoid and cautious about doing anything on my PC. If you don't know every single variable, every single in-and-out of your software, or if you're just a USER, it's an unstable mess. I am not a programmer or a coder, I'm just a user who browses the web and plays some games..with an introduction to IT degree that I never plan on using.
My Arch journey was definitely not a waste of time because I learned a ton about Linux, and I absolutely see how it could benefit users with specific needs who want better control of their software. But it just isn't worth the overarching headache for me. Solus is my PC's home, forever.

elfprince

Agreed! Tinkerers are welcome to tinker with DIY and FIY distros, but for daily uninterrupted use Solus is great! 😁