What's going on with Solus development?

Scotty-Trees

JoshStrobl Would people rather me work on the Software Center that isn't going to see the light of day yet, or make sure their system isn't riddled with security vulnerabilities and outdated packages from 6 years ago?

In case this wasn't a rhetorical question (Narrator: It was.), personally I'd much rather have a secure & as up to date as possible system that's operating as intended than something new aka sol when eopkg still does a decent job like 99% of the time.

WetGeek

Scotty-Trees eopkg still does a decent job like 99% of the time

Agreed. I've used eopkg ever since I first found out about it, and apart from the occasional dropped connection, it's been remarkably comprehensive, fast, and reliable. And that occasional dropped connection is trivial to restore. This week I installed 3 updates for an average of nearly 500 upgrades each, and did not experience a single dropped connection on any of them.

brent

Xrey274 Solus always had a rather slow development, but it seems that recently it has almost stopped.

Solus is clearly worked on around the clock. You are forming an opinion based on a timestamp of a component it seems.

George

JoshStrobl It might be wrong to say that, but I think the solus team has done a lot more since the last release than the paid windows developers team.

h3o

Just want to add that I find Solus to be in a very usable, functional, and stable state now. I know ppl like seeing new things, but this is currently a very reliable daily driver. Why not just enjoy that? lol

George

Xrey274 I think it's still offensive. You disrespect the work of the maintainers: Josh, Joey and Brian recently rebuilt the repository, Friedrich made updates to the Plasma stack, other maintainers are also contributing. Solus has big plans, but it takes time to implement them.

If you are so interested, then the road looks like this:

ypkg3, gnome 40 (Spring) > ferryd, kde plasma 5.22 (summer) > sol, kde plasma 5.23 (early fall) > updated installer, Software Center, Budgie 11, Solus ISO OEM (To Be Determined)

We saw what happened to windows 10 when the development team focused on killer-features: bug on bug, more bug

I think that to all of us who love solus and feel part of solus, the question is not when there will be new killer-features, but how I can help the project in addition to donations.

WetGeek

George We saw what happened to windows 10 when the development team focused on killer-features: bug on bug, more bug

I remember that well. Finally they woke up and released a version that was almost all bug fixes and no new features.

DataDrake

George If you are so interested, then the road looks like this:

ypkg3, gnome 40 (Spring) > ferryd, kde plasma 5.22 (summer) > sol, kde plasma 5.23 (early fall) > updated installer, Software Center, Budgie 11, Solus ISO OEM (To Be Determined)

This does not reflect any official or unofficial roadmaps or priorities.

GNOME and KDE stack upgrades are contingent on (1) when they are released and (2) when they are stable enough to update to. We have a rough idea of when (1) will happen after the last time (2) happened, but we can't plan until the .0 is released, giving us an idea when .1 will be out and if we need to wait to .2, which can vary quite a bit.

As far as my development projects go, that largely depends on the time I have available and what the highest priority is at the moment. ferryd is a higher priority than ypkg3, but I don't have enough time at the moment to give it the multiple consecutive days of my attention it needs. So instead, I'm focusing on ypkg3 development which I can easily work on in short bursts and which happens to have overlap with some of ferryd and sol's needs. Unless I am able to work on Solus full-time this year, I would not anticipate that sol will get finished by the end of the year. The installer is going to need some love sooner rather than later, as well. Everything else is much lower priority at the moment.

George

WetGeek yes, that's right, I think it's due to the new director of Windows Development Mr. Panay

George

DataDrake in our last conversation, you mentioned something like this (with the exception of De stacks). Yes, I should have emphasized that this is just an approximate direction of where the project is heading and what are the plans

serebit

I'm still not convinced that Solus is real. I've never seen DataDrake or JoshStrobl outside of Twitch...

Jokes aside, as a fairly active contributor to Solus, I can say for certain that work is being done on the things you've outlined. As Josh and Bryan have mentioned, though, we're all volunteers right now. The more people step in to help maintain packages that they use, and the more people contribute to Solus projects like Budgie, the more time the core team can spend on infrastructure and shiny new features. Plus, with donations open again, they can now invest in hardware for a faster development cycle! Solus development is far from stopped.

Xrey274

I'm glad that this innocent and genuine question got some of you so defensive. I wonder what about my post was "Over Dramatic"?

Scotty-Trees

Xrey274 Is it really that innocent to go on a community's own forum and make broad assumptions about the devs not doing enough work to meet your standards of "development"? I'm just looking at this objectively. Nowhere in this post do I see anyone getting "defensive" as you say. All I see is people expressing their objective views on the matter, which comes from both maintainers & devs and some users as well. If you call being given objective facts getting defensive then I suppose that's your own prerogative, but I would hope that at the very least, you appreciate that various users took the time to read and reply to your post to shed some light onto the topic at hand. Unfortunately, since you didn't participate, or reply to any comments or offer up a single follow-up question out of curiosity or concern, I don't believe you have any desire to have an open, and honest discussion about this topic. The Solus forums are meant for helping troubleshooting user issues and a place to have meaningful and respectful discussions about Solus, open software, or the occasional off topic discussion. Do please try to keep that in mind for next time.

brent

Xrey274 this innocent and genuine question

😉

Junglist

Xrey274 We get this type of posts on the forums several times a year. You never know which one is a genuine, albeit maybe poorly worded question, and which one is yet another Solus naysayer coming here to stir stuff up (yes, we get those from time to time).

The reason for the 'Over Dramatic' tag is to make it plainly visible for all forum users that there are some factual errors / inconsistencies contained that might be misleading to someone who is not deeply knowledgeable about how Solus operates.

Staudey

Xrey274 I'm glad that this innocent and genuine question got some of you so defensive. I wonder what about my post was "Over Dramatic"?

That's always going to happen when you criticize something people love (or appear to criticize it). No matter if it's a person, car, philosophy or operating system.
For what it's worth I think that your question is a valid one; especially when you don't follow the IRC channels, twitter of the Core Team etc.; The mods and devs have done a good job of answering it in this thread IMO.
The "Overly Dramatic" was possibly a reaction to your Budgie Desktop View comments; see also Josh's and Harvey's explanation of that situation.

Xrey274

Scotty-Trees I'm not accusing anyone of not putting in enough time/work to meet my standards of "development". I'm just sharing my own observation of a slowed development and was curious what it was due to. And yes some (definitely not all) of the comments seem to have this prejudice against my question and taking it with the assumption that I have some negative intention (harrasing, making fun or just criticising the developers), which I do not. I have to admit that before Josh's comment I was not aware that Budgie's desktop view is considered feature complete. I still stand on my opinion that it is lackluster, but if this is what the developers have decided, then so be it.

PaperTiger

Xrey274 Again, you have made some broad generalizations in your last post that shows you lack appreciation for what has been explained thus far.

Xrey274 I'm just sharing my own observation of a slowed development and was curious what it was due to.

That assumption has been debunked several times. Development has not slowed, but you seem to have this notion that it has. The focus is simply not on what you think it should be.

Xrey274 I still stand on my opinion that it is lackluster, but if this is what the developers have decided, then so be it.

There is the disrespect that others have been flagging. If Solus isn't working for you, there a tons of other distros that you are free to move to. However, coming to a forum such as this and expressing yourself in such terms will do you no favours!

George

Xrey274 ooh, no! What is it? It's a bird? It's a plane? It's Solus 4.3!!!

https://getsol.us/2021/07/11/solus-4-3-released/