Last night I tried to install the MATE version. Boot loader made two of the four distributions Xubuntu and RebornOS unbootable with kernel panics. Fortunately, Fedora worked.
The installer worked fine.
The updater never completed the task. It was stuck on the 503rd pack for like 15-20 minutes and then completely stuck on the "524 of 514" package!!!!
After every attempt to install and update (I did 4 of them) SOLUS was not working properly at all. The lock screen was entering an endless restart loop. After force reboot the panel items was entering an endless loop and the system was so laggy that became unusable.
I also tried clean install and then (without updating) install one simple package (without dependencies). Again the package manager failed and completely stuck.
It is very strange that soooo many issues came out .
Any idea what could be so wrong?

    apapamarkou Boot loader made two of the four distributions Xubuntu and RebornOS unbootable with kernel panics.

    4 distros on 1 drive or multiple? How did you partition them? I would guess more than 1 os is on the same boot partition is the root of your troubles.

    apapamarkou I also tried clean install and then (without updating)

    Always update 1st.

          murbert

          sudo fdisk -l
Device     Boot      Start        End   Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1             2048  307201266 307199219 146.5G 83 Linux
/dev/sda2        307202048  613387507 306185460   146G 83 Linux
/dev/sda3        613388286 1126401657 513013372 244.6G  5 Extended
/dev/sda4       1126402048 1953523711 827121664 394.4G  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda5  *     613388288  906354687 292966400 139.7G 83 Linux
/dev/sda6        906356736 1126401657 220044922 104.9G 83 Linux

              apapamarkou Any idea what could be so wrong?

              Well, the only issue is that there are A LOT of updates after the initial installation currently, due to the ISO files being old. Of course with a partial update there will be problems (sounds like you cancelled the update process in some way). Like murbert said DEFINITELY first do a full update before installing anything else, to avoid complications.

              I'd recommend updating via the terminal in your case, because that will give you more info during the process.

              Run sudo eopkg up and then look at the output. If it's actually gets stuck in some place it should be apparent, and fail after a while. Note that some packages like the linux-firmware/headers, or papirus-icon-theme can take a long time to unpack, depending on your hardware.

                  Staudey
                  I tried twice from the command line.
                  First I tried a full sudo eopkg up from the beginning. The installation got stuck on the last package (python-encryption...something) trying to update the boot.
                  The second time I tried to force a partial upgrade by installing a gtk package first. In this phase the first 300 packages were updated. Then I did sudo eopkg up to update the rest. Again got stuck on the very last python-encryption package trying to update the boot.
                  However everything seems to work after these attempts except the gui software manager (I tried to install Chrome and got stuck and there is no detailed feed back to tell what is going on). The sudo eopkg up and the Software Manager sais that everything is up to date, the boot procedure seems normal and the applications are updated and working.


                      apapamarkou This is my output from the same command
                      Device Start End Sectors Size Type
                      /dev/nvme0n1p1 2048 206847 204800 100M EFI System
                      /dev/nvme0n1p2 206848 239615 32768 16M Microsoft reserved
                      /dev/nvme0n1p3 239616 613358220 613118605 292.4G Microsoft basic data
                      /dev/nvme0n1p4 613359616 614402047 1042432 509M Windows recovery environment
                      /dev/nvme0n1p5 614404096 976773119 362369024 172.8G Microsoft basic data

                      Device Start End Sectors Size Type
                      /dev/sda1 2048 1003519 1001472 489M EFI System
                      /dev/sda2 1003520 488395214 487391695 232.4G Linux LVM

                      Each OS need not be on its own drive as mine is but each OS should have it's own EFI partition.

                        apapamarkou Interesting. Not sure what exactly the issue in your case is/was, especially without the actual error message.

                        Since it was an error related to updating the boot I'd make sure that your EFI partition is big enough (at least 512 MB are recommended). And/or make sure you're actually running the latest kernel (e.g. by comparing the output of uname -a and eopkg info linux-current)

                        When it comes to your Chrome installation issue you can in this case also check what is going wrong by running the command from a terminal. See here for instructions: https://getsol.us/articles/software/third-party/en/#browsers

                            Staudey
                            OK more info about my machine...
                            AMD FX(tm)-8120 Eight-Core Processor (model 2011)
                            8GB RAM
                            Kernel Linux 5.15.68-218.current x86_64 (after update)

                            Boot system ---> BIOS (not EFI or UEFI)
                            Note that my partition setup hosted Debian,Fedora,Arch, and numerous related distros like Mint,Manjaro,Ubuntu,SuSE etc, with no boot related issues.

                            sudo eopkg upshows that when installing libavantana-appindicator it is trying to remove libappindicator. At this point it stack updating "clr-boot-manager". After 10+ minutes of waiting I interrupt hitting crtl+c. The procedure continues with the next package and finish.
                            The strange thing is that the clr-boot-manager updates successfully 2 times. Once before that package and once on a later package (after the brutal ctrl+c).

                            When it comes to your Chrome installation issue you can in this case also check what is going wrong by running the command from a terminal. See here for instructions: https://getsol.us/articles/software/third-party/en/#browsers

                            THANX!!!!! That worked.

                              19 days later

                              [SOLVED] All of the above.

                              My drive was partitioned using a windows10 utility.
                              Yesterday partitioned my drive with gparted and all of my problems gone!

                              I remembered that 20 years ago when I had boot related problems I solved them this way.
                              I was convinced that now with the windows10/11 things will have changed, but I was wrong...

                              Thank you all !!!!