I first tried Budgie, then made a mistake (I think) in SMPlayer changing the default engine from mv3 to smplayer and smplayer froze, then the system froze, then when I rebooted all the programs I had spent a good hour or so installing were gone and I had a fresh post-installation setup again. Very strange.
But I very much like the feel of SOLUS plus was amazed at the low temperature at which my Lenovo W530 with 32 GB Ram was running - at around 50C vs the usual 65+ (with lots of tabs open + playing a movie etc.).

I installed Gnome instead because that's what I have on daily driver (Manjaro) and am used to, but now that am set up (and happy), I am wondering: was that issue to do with Budgie or did I just make a snap judgment error. Since Solus made Budgie (have since learned) am willing to give it another try but don't want to bother if this sort of issue is known to happen with it.

I just learned about the rollback feature which is neat.

The default player is Gnome MPV (aka Celluloid) on Budgie. But I use MPV. Works pretty good. 🙂

I use SMPlayer because its subtitles downloader from within the program works much better than others (when opensubtitles.org is working which it often is not) and my wife needs Spanish subtitles.
But am still curious if Solus and/or Budgie often crashes. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before with Linux. Nearly all my problems have had to do with permissions, disks, booting and so forth.

    BaronAsh I use VLC with VLSub to download subtitles. I have to admit I rarely do it and I am too lazy to compare with other video players but it does the job

        BaronAsh I use SMPlayer because its subtitles downloader from within the program works much better than others (when opensubtitles.org is working which it often is not) and my wife needs Spanish subtitles.
        But am still curious if Solus and/or Budgie often crashes. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before with Linux. Nearly all my problems have had to do with permissions, disks, booting and so forth.

        @BaronAsh

        I run Solus Budgie. I installed it on my laptop in March 2019. Since then there have been two issues that caused me some problems. Both issues were able to be fixed through using the Boot Rescue page on the Solus website.

        In my opinion, two full years running the same installation of any distro of Linux is a clear example of the stability and reliability of how it was designed.

        When at all possible, I personally suggest the use of Flatpak's over Snaps. There ARE issues that have been noted when using Snaps on the Solus platform as you can read about here, here, and here. I don't know if it is simply a Solus problem or a Linux problem because this has been reported on in other distro forums.

        I have never been able to run another distro of Linux more than a few months. The were only two times that I ever personally experienced a Solus system being irrevokable beyond repair and both times were on my roommates desktop running Solus KDE. The first time he had installed Gnome and KDE on the same system and user and he was forced to reinstall. The second was more recent and it was a kernel issue I couldn't figure out in which only a reinstallation was able to fix.

        But overall, on my laptop, running Budgie, I have never experienced anything except the highest level of stability and reliability and I believe that the issue you experienced was erroneous. When using snaps on any system make sure that after you get snapd running that you logout and log back in. Also in your case perhaps it would be good to test by restarting between each program installation.

        If you have any questions feel free to ask.

          PS: The Solus releases of Gnome, KDE, and MATE are all, in my opinion, some of the best implementations of these desktop environments currently available.

          Budgie is highly customizable and with some tweaking it isn't that hard to get Budgie looking like Gnome. This is personally why I am running Budgie over Gnome.. I had recently been thinking of switching to Gnome towards the end of Gnome 3.38 but I am going to stick with Budgie because I don't like the horizontal layout that Gnome 40 switched too.

          If you look in my top bar there is a Virtual Desktop Switcher in my top bar. It is just to the left of the system icons, volume, etc on the top right of my screen in the picture I shared. There are five virtual desktop windows available (user customizable though) and you just drag and drop the icons to change which desktop you want them located.

          Gnome is not nearly this customizable, especially since the switch to Gnome 40, and I thought I would point that out. Budgie is superior to Gnome, in my opinion, when it comes to reliability, stability, and customization.

          The one area Budgie is lacking is in the required resources. Budgie takes about 1.2-1.6 Gbs of RAM at idle. My overall resource consumption of my CPU is low but the RAM usage is high.

          Thank you very much. It seems I don't have notifications on because I didn't notice your reply.
          I have had Manjaro Gnome going for well over a year with only minor issues - none of which I now recall. Sometimes after a big update it is glitchy, so then I run Timeshift to the day before and the next update a day later everything is fine. That said, having stumbled onto Solus because Arch pamac was malfunctioning last week and I was trying to get a new SSD to have a backup OS on it, I am very impressed. I feels stable and smooth somehow, though still have a few issues outstanding, chief amongst which is being unable to shut her down (!) and not figuring out how to install Timeshift which I need for emergencies.

          I figured out how to see the workspaces and like the interface in the Panel, though usually I have too many program favorites down there for them and actually prefer gnome's Super Key flash to desktop with the horizontal windows. But I can do Super Pgd Dn/Up to scroll through and it works great.

          My biggest positive for Solus is how low it runs. I'll take high ram usage any day, though seem to be using less than Manjaro Gnome and the temperature is way lower which to me indicates a well put together operating system and thus one I intend to most likely be using as the main daily driver once am sure it works for me.

          brent That's good to know. I used to always use VLC but found the subtitles downloading option was often not working right and at the time this was a known bug. Maybe they've fixed. SmPlayer always works, but the site they go to (opensubtitles.org) is perhaps underfunded since often you cannot access it. When it is available, the whole process is a snap.

              BaronAsh I'm finding after a day it's not perfect, kinda hit and miss. But I'm playing with it.

                VLC used to be my main go to program, but for a few years now, Netflix and Amazon Prime streaming replaced it. Automatic subtitles too. 😆

                @BaronAsh there is a reason for Solus' stability. It is by design.

                DataDrake discusses the move towards Solus as a stateless system. If you think back to Microsoft Windows and the registry.. that makes direct changes to the system files. With a stateless system you make changes to configuration files which make the changes to the system but never make changes at the system level.

                Manjaro is great. I had Manjaro Budgie installed on one of my laptops for a year up until recently. I like some of the python Budgie applets but I dislike getting my software from the AUR.. something about it just makes me feel less secure.

                The default player is Gnome MPV (aka Celluloid) on Budgie. But I use MPV. Works pretty good. 🙂