Solus Lacks Built-In Tools

dostana

I've been using Solus for a while now, and I'd like to share my observations. Requirement of built-in tools for OS self-healing in Solus. Updates frequently cause mayhem, and there are no GUI tools to return to the previous state; instead, one must experiment with the cmd prompt. Option to turbocharge the operating system, necessary (enable/disable), Option, identifies hardware and obtains the suitable driver (for AMD CPU, option do not work). System monitoring modifications signal possible errors and attention to rollback on the next reboot.

I feel new team should concentrate on Solus OS make it more AI intelligent rather working DE. Getting OS immune to breakdown is important and should auto revert to working stable status on ACK reboot. For DE, damn Gnome is better.

synth-ruiner

dostana Updates frequently cause mayhem

partial updates, maybe. what other "mayhem" is there?

dostana turbocharge the operating system

what do you mean by this?

CorvusRuber

dostana Updates frequently cause mayhem

Absolutely false. As synth-ruiner said, if you stick to full system updates (the only kind of update which makes sense for a rolling release distro) there's simply no way to end up in "mayhem".....unless you have been doing multiple, voluntary, non standard and heavily customized (in short: unsupported) stuff to your system before updating it.
And since you mention Gnome: third party extensions (which must be installed by the user....) are an excellent way to end up with an unusable desktop after a major system update due to conflicting requirements.

Brucehankins

dostana Updates frequently cause mayhem

This hasn't been my experience in the past 3+ years. I have Solus installed on 3 machines, and it's only ever been broken by my own doing, not by updates.
The same can not be said in my time with Manjaro, Garuda, Arco, and other arch based distros.

tomscharbach

dostana Updates frequently cause mayhem ...

I've run Solus Budgie on a Dell Optiplex 7070 Micro from 2017/2018 without any update problems other than periodic issues with the download process from RIT, and I've run Solus Budgie on a Dell Inspiron 11-3180 laptop for the last year or two without update issues.

I've read about various update issues on this forum, but I've not experienced them myself.

I suspect that is because (1) both Solus computers are vanilla Intel-based (that is, Intel CPU/GPU/NIC etc) builds from an OEM that supports Linux, and (2) I run Budgie out-of-the-box without modification except for adding Gnome Boxes and Steam on the desktop and adding Zoom Flatpak on the laptop.

As far as I can tell from reading the forum over the years, update "mayhem" is almost always directly related to non-standard builds and/or drivers that are not supported in the kernel and need to be reinstalled after kernel update. That is not always the case, of course, but non-standard builds/hardware are the usual culprits.

dostana I feel new team should concentrate on Solus OS make it more AI intelligent rather working DE. Getting OS immune to breakdown is important and should auto revert to working stable status on ACK reboot.

My impression from reading this forum is that the Solus team is focused on stability and does a good job of keeping Solus stable, but I agree with you that a simple, built-in rollback feature would be a good addition for the future. I understand that some other distros take snapshots (similar to Windows restore points) before updating, and that might be a good addition. I'm not sure that I want rollbacks controlled by AI, because AI as often as not is low-I, as likely to compound problems as solve them.

brent

tomscharbach . I'm not sure that I want rollbacks controlled by AI, because AI as often as not is low-I, as likely to compound problems as solve them

that's my take as well.

dostana I feel new team should concentrate on Solus OS make it more AI intelligent rather working DE. Getting OS immune to breakdown is important and should auto revert to working stable status on ACK reboot

This is literally asking Solus (core) to adopt a posture opposite of its stated goals and more in line with others. While I love a good paradigm shift as much as the next guy (these shifts are necessary in growth) part of Solus' charm is that it walks its own path. There's nothing wrong with a commitment to a great desktop experience. It's refreshing actually.
2-3 cents
edit: forgot a word

elfprince

I would prefer to stay away from AI as long as possible. No Judgement Day please! 😀

Staudey

dostana I feel new team should concentrate on Solus OS make it more AI intelligent rather working DE. Getting OS immune to breakdown is important and should auto revert to working stable status on ACK reboot. For DE, damn Gnome is better.

If I understand you correctly, you want the team to focus on the stability of the system, instead of developing a DE. In that case you're in luck, because with the recent split-up the Budgie team is completely separate from the Solus team. Okay, that is not quite correct, since @EbonJaeger is active for both Budgie and Solus, but the organizations are separate now.

Getting a system to the point where it's "immune to breakdown" is extremely hard (I would even say impossible), but we'll see what the future holds.

tomscharbach

Staudey If I understand you correctly, you want the team to focus on the stability of the system, instead of developing a DE.

A related question, arising both from ignorance and curiosity: Budgie aside while that project pulls apart from Solus and gets up and running, how are DE's (Gnome, Mate, Plasma) maintained for Solus?

Is the maintenance process similar to packages like LibreOffice and Firefox, where updated packages are downloaded by maintainers, tested and deployed in periodic Solus updates, or is the process more complicated? To what extent are the DE's tweaked for Solus, and, if so, why?

What sparked my curiosity is that I remember reading (a year or two back) that the Budgie, Gnome and Mate DE's were more or less interchangeable, in the sense that a user with one DE could switch to either of the others via simple terminal commands, but the Plasma DE required a fresh installation if the user was using any of the others, and vice a versus.

If my memory of that differrence is correct, that suggests significant levels of integration between the DE's and Solus, and that in turn, suggests that DE maintenance is more complicated than package maintenance.

Brucehankins

tomscharbach I'm sure DE maintenance is more complicated than package maintaining. Think about Gnome and Plasma particularly and all the integrations they have and the in house apps they make. The leadership and maintainer need to decide which apps will be included and which won't, what system level integrations they will have and how it affects other aspects of the OS.

As far as the recommendation to do a fresh install moving from Gnome/Budgie to Plasma, my guess would be the GTK vs Qt base. There are a ton of packages that are required for each DE, and probably a ton more dependencies too. File managers, apps, it's a horse of a different color.

kyrios

Brucehankins It depends on the DE. Unlike Plasma, MATE isn't a big thing at all. Building the whole MATE is faster than building Firefox or Libreoffice and it has only one "major" update per year.