Budgie/Solus Road Map

rrfss

Harvey Thank you for the very thorough reply!

Given the amount of work going into Solus I know design and functionality choices are not arbitrary so contributions aren't time-wasting. Just probing for understanding.

My question about "premise and goal" was answered by your comment " Solus is all about that curated experience". I didn't get that impression from the homepage, or any other advertisement of Solus. This is the first time I've heard it. Knowing that now, I understand the software center side of things more and the curation of packages. I'm a fan of minimalist, modern, and elegant software. Hopefully, this is the place to be.

No argument on unverified being included, I didn't fully comprehend the packaging and testing hurdle, understood. The 3rd Party section's purpose/reason for existing wasn't clear, now understood. Now that I know the intention to integrate snap/flatpak in our software center with applicable labels for users to choose, like half of my misunderstanding was addressed. The "rolling-release" nature wasn't completely clear to me, understood. PPA-like / User repo/AUR functionality not existing rolls into the "unverified software" answer.

The code repo thing should really be made more clear in the documentation or somewhere. "Solus-Project" is abandoned with no way to take it down, got it. Had no idea that Budgie is not synonymous with Solus, I thought it was being developed in-house with the ability to be used on other OS's like GNOME or xfce. Has a lot to do with not knowing about the whole soulus-project thing which shares branding. it wasn't super clear about solus-project vs getsolus so that answers a lot. If budgie isn't connected, is the in-house GUI thing related to the talk of Wayland I see around for v11?

IRC choice, understood. I need to find a more modern-looking client, or figure out how to make/hack one. The main discord thing for me was about the benefit of easy access to real-time communication on a more mainstream platform, I was unaware of the downsides.

Everything after the IRC section is all wrapped into my lack of understanding about the Software center that will include our packages, snap, and flatpak. I worded that whole "software center" paragraph weirdly, but I got my answer anyway lol. I understood why we don't use other distros repos, and didn't mean to imply any connection between Solus and another distro.

I'm sorry if my questions and whatnot seem obtuse. I'm a novice programmer with basically no contribution history to open-source projects, but still want to help out. I figure if I don't understand these things, it will be hard for other new people too.

Staudey

rrfss "Solus-Project" is abandoned with no way to take it down, got it. Had no idea that Budgie is not synonymous with Solus, I thought it was being developed in-house with the ability to be used on other OS's like GNOME or xfce.

Yes, this whole situation unfortunately resulted out of the project's history, as Harvey mentioned. When it comes to Budgie it actually did grow out of Solus (then under the old name "Evolve OS") and was closely tied to it for a while, then separated out to make cooperation with other distributions easier, then brought closer to Solus again and now finally separated into the "BuddiesOfBudgie" organization (as discussed above). So I can see how a user would be confused by the whole situation, together with the switch from "solus-project" to "getsolus" for all other repositories. Unfortunately nothing much that can be done about that, unless a favor from github allows the team to set the old repositories to "Archived" status or similar. The only place where this was possible was for the budgie-desktop repository because Josh still had access to it.

rrfss IRC choice, understood. I need to find a more modern-looking client, or figure out how to make/hack one.

There are IRC bridges for a number of other messenger networks. I personally use the Matrix network (via the modern "Element" client) and access the Solus IRC channels via the bridge there.

Harvey

rrfss The code repo thing should really be made more clear in the documentation or somewhere. "Solus-Project" is abandoned with no way to take it down.

For the github org solus-project, I agree. We need to change the budgie link too on the getting involved page and should probably explain that Solus and Budgie are seperate now, given the confusing history.

If budgie isn't connected, is the in-house GUI thing related to the talk of Wayland I see around for v11?

Not sure what wayland talk you speak of, I do not use Budgie, I am on Plasma. So I do not always keep up with the plans of it. But if you are asking about it becoming the default, the standing as far as Solus goes has always been Wayland will be the default when its ready, which is for the team to test and decide. For every person I have seen successfully switch and stay there long term. I have seen double the amount forced to switch back due to issues. The same can be said of pipewire. Ready when its ready.

The main discord thing for me was about the benefit of easy access to real-time communication on a more mainstream platform, I was unaware of the downsides.

Not saying alternatives are rulled out forever, just not right now. Especially with the restructuring going on at the moment, there are bigger fish to fry.

I'm sorry if my questions and whatnot seem obtuse. I'm a novice programmer with basically no contribution history to open-source projects, but still want to help out. I figure if I don't understand these things, it will be hard for other new people too.

I have no problem with people asking questions. Thank you for your feedback. 🙂

synth-ruiner

rrfss IRC choice, understood. I need to find a more modern-looking client

Srain is pretty modern-looking. I've only messed with it a little bit though. it's available as a flatpak...

rrfss

Staudey

Staudey Matrix network (via the modern "Element" client) and access the Solus IRC channels via the bridge there.

I know how this is going to sound - that's a lot of work.

Of course, I'll do it, but thinking about the "average" pc user that just checks email, goes on Facebook, and other non-power user tasks wants as close to a one-click solution as possible. As I said, I like minimal and elegant solutions haha

Staudey

rrfss Oh, I thought you wanted something for yourself, not in general.
The default solution is of course the pre-installed IRC client on Solus.

rrfss

Harvey I'll switch over to plasma and give that a try. I use Zorin OS's heavily modded GNOME as my daily driver. I've been hesitant to switch over to Solus until I played around with it. I like how Budgie looks for sure, but I need a solution to have a panel on multiple monitors and budgie cant provide it. I've never used anything other than gnome, so I'll try out plasma.

Thank you for all the clarifications

ximbietc

Is there a preferred GUI toolkit for future Solus-made apps, such as the rewrite of the Software Center?

Is there also any HIG for desktop-agnostic apps?

DataDrake

ximbietc At the moment, I think we'll stick with GTK3/4 without libhandy/libadwaita. I'm optimistic that Josh and co will give us a good option with EFL, but I'd like to see where they end up before committing to it.

WetGeek

DataDrake I'm optimistic that Josh and co will give us a good option with EFL

Not being familiar with EFL, out of curiosity I researched it. I found 6 or 7 different meanings, starting with "English Football League," but nothing to do with software development. What am I missing?

Staudey

WetGeek "Enlightenment Foundation Libraries" https://www.enlightenment.org/about

WetGeek

Staudey "Enlightenment Foundation Libraries"

Damn! That's impressive. I'm using Terminology now in place of Konsole, and it's left me wondering about just one thing. When I launched it for the first time, I set 120 as the scaling factor, but I guessed wrong and as a result the characters on my FHD screen are really hard to work with. I've been unable to find any way to adjust that now. I suppose I should look for a config file.

Ah ... I just found out by accident that Ctrl+Up/Down changes the font size. I was trying to figure out command history. I'll be happy if my new font size sticks.

I can't wait until I'm able to try out Rage on my media machine.

WetGeek

WetGeek I was trying to figure out command history

Just to be clear, command history works the same way as it always has ... with Up and Down keys. I'm not sure why I was trying to find a way to use the mouse scroll wheel for that, but I realized my mistake right away.

By the way, after using Terminology for a bit, I've discovered some of its rough edges, but so far nothing that would affect my using it, just minor annoyances. Still, I'm keeping Konsole close at hand, in case I ever DO find a showstopper in Terminology.

rrfss

You guys are awesome, thank you for the info. I think my only other question is what should I do? It's not very clear what issues/tasks are appropriate to work on. Learning how to package has been suggested, but in the dev tracker they're all awaiting triage. The stuff in the GitHub (like the software center) looked stagnant and I wasn't sure if it was appropriate to fork and play with.

Harvey

rrfss

If you want to get involved in packaging there is an accepted for inclusion list here: https://dev.getsol.us/project/view/4/

But that is not all of them, tasks for accepted requests are not left open forever and usually get closed 30+ days after being accepted if no one has stepped up to maintain it. That does not mean they are no longer eligible for inclusion, they are just closed to avoid clutter. You can see them all here, be sure to read the task for the package you are interested in, it should say something along the lines of:

This has sat in accepted for inclusion for over 30 days. Clearly, there is a lack of demand for the inclusion of this software, nobody has stepped up to provide a completed patch, maintain it, and properly integrate it. Closing as a result. Feel free to reopen but only when someone offers a patch via our proper patch submission methods and volunteers to be maintainer.

Some things anyone should consider before becoming a package maintainer.

Package maintainers should use the application they wish maintain, avoid adding/maintaining things purely because someone requested it. Just like you should not request things purely because they exist and are not in the repository.
Are you going to use Solus long term? Example are you a distro hopper? We have had this before and it resulted in the maintainer saying were unable to update the package when it was needed because they switched to another distro for a month as part of a challenge (whatever that means). Solus users should not have to go without updates for a month because of this. They were of course replaced.
If a new maintainer is needed for whatever reason a request is put out. If no one is found in a reasonable amount of time the package is removed from the repository.

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