I'm planning on posting a review of Solus on my blog. Feedback welcomed.

Looking for Mr. Good Distro, or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the Solus Distro

(Ok, no more metaphors)

Searching for a Linux desktop distribution? The good news? You have lots of choices. The bad news? You have lots of choices, like hundreds.

A few months ago, a circa 2010 Macbook Pro came into my possession. It had a dead battery and hard drive (the spinny kind). For fun, I thought I would see if I could update it and maybe give it to someone who couldn't afford a laptop. Forty-five dollars later and 20 minutes of fiddling, it had a new battery and 120GB solid-state drive.

[picture of laptop here]

Now, what do I use for an operating system?

Well, it's a Mac so let's install a Mac OS. After a few hours, I had the "High Sierra" version of the Mac OS installed. It was abysmally slow and rebooted often. It was not looking good so far.

Then I started trying Linux distributions. A quick Internet search and the usual distributions popped up, including Unbuntu, Linux Mint, MX Linux, Manjaro, Zorin, Elementary, etc.

To my surprise, most of these distributions would not boot. Most would simply go into the void, although a few were kind enough to print an error message. A few did work, including Manjaro, Elementary OS, and Fedora Workstation.

After installing a few dozen different distros I found anything Debian, Arch, or Unbuntu derived would not boot or was unstable after installation.

Of the 3 distros above, Fedora seemed the most stable and reliable. It also booted the fastest of the three. However, the daily updates were distracting. Also, it would occasionally crash using the Wayland version of the Gnome desktop. It was stable using the X11 version of the Gnome desktop. It wasn't perfect, but then again, the hardware was 12 years old. I probably couldn't expect more.

[picture of Fedora here]

Then one day while browsing Distro Watch, I saw a distribution called Solus. Being an independent distribution caught my attention. So I flashed a USB with the .ISO and started the boot.

A few seconds in the screen scrambled with random characters. Great, another, dead-on-arrival boot. And then just as fast, the desktop appeared.

Damn! That was fast, and from a flash drive no less. The wallpaper sucked but that was easy to change. After about 15 minutes of driving the live ISO, I decided it was worth installing. Ten minutes later and it was installed and running.

Of course, the first thing is to update the operating system. I used the software center desktop application to do this. It took a while. The .ISO has not been updated in over a year so there was a lot to download and install. However, the process was entirely hands-off.

[picture of Solus]

So why is Solus better than the previous Fedora install?

  • Quiet. Fedora was always nagging me for updates. Solus updates are once a week.

  • Stable. Fedora on rare occasions would lock up.

  • Fast. Yeah, everybody says they're fast but on my old hardware, you can see and feel the differences between distros.

  • Vanilla Gnome Desktop. Solus has several desktop distributions including their flagship Budgie desktop. The Gnome desktop is minimal, which I like. They didn't try to, "Doll it up" with useless crud. I appreciate that.

  • The package manager is fast. Much faster than DNF or APT. And the commands are simple words like, "install" and "remove".

  • Less Crud. I could have done without the Libre Office Suite and some of the other programs like HexChat, but otherwise, it's relatively lightweight compared to other distros.

  • Boots Fast. It takes 20 seconds to get to the login screen on a 12-year-old chunk of hardware. Nice!

  • Sleeps without crashing. Solus is the only OS that sleeps without crashing on this hardware. Every other distro, including Fedora would hang when waking up from sleep.

Mostly what I like about Solus is that I don't have to manage Solus. It feels like a quiet, dutiful partner, ready to serve at a moment's notice.

    (Ok, no more movie title puns)
    FIFY🙂

    --now that you have the bullet points separated, contrast those points with the other distros and expand another sentence. One sentence is never enough for freaks like me. Crud, for instance, deserves more.
    --also it evolves into a "compared to Fedora" dealio whereas other distros are mentioned at the beginning.
    --you get to your Solus review in the 9th paragraph. Work Solus in way early that that. The reader does need the setup, I agree, but nine 'grafs down too long.

    I like it overall. Expand some thoughts.

      mike-ward Unbuntu

      Ubuntu (oo-boon-too)
      sorry, I'm not in the habit of correcting spelling but you did ask for edits 😁 it's a good piece of writing! I also love how Solus breathes life into 10+-year-old hardware.

          mike-ward maybe mention the fact that it's a rolling release model, not a standard 6-month or LTS model. Your call on that.

          I know for myself, I didn't understand the difference in the begining of my Linux journey, and it wasn't until I was on a rolling distro that I really appreciated the "install it once and use it forever" mentality. I know Mint, Ubuntu and others have come a long way with updating to new releases, but on rolling, nothing ever feels old or stale.

            Excellent point. I'll add it. Is the term "curated rolling release" correct here.

            brent Agree, it does take a while to work up to Solus.

            Agree, too much Fedora in there. Thing is, I really like Fedora before I found Solus.

            Agree, more detail on crud

                mike-ward Looking for Mr. Good Distro, or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the Solus Distro

                I'd definitely installed that distro after reading your post, ...but wailt, I already have it installed. So kudos for referencing Stanley Kubrick, good job!

                  I think spending time comparing to the only other feasible distro (Fedora) is the right way to do it.

                  Problem - computer needs alternative OS that works well since Mac os didn't
                  Solutions tried - list various distros, many of which were eliminated immediately (couldn't boot), some after install as they were unstable
                  Viable solution - Fedora, detail what worked and what didn't work so well in the distro
                  Permanent solution - Solus. Compare to the only other viable distro you could find

                    murbert on a second read I have to mostly concur. I didn't actually piece the narrative together til the second time ( I was looking at different things).

                      Thank you all for your valuable feedback. I'll incorporate your suggestions and post it this weekend.

                      I love the reference to Dr Strangelove (it's a great movie).