Wow, it has been a long time since we put out a new set of testing ISOs for OpenCollective backers! As we work towards releasing Solus 4.4, we have got some new treats for those subscribed to Release Testers, Beta Testers and Crew tiers. If you are in one of those tiers, you should expect to receive an email shortly with details for downloading the ISOs. Please keep in mind that these ISOs are pre-release snapshots and not representative of the final Solus 4.4 images.

These ISOs feature:

  • General & Hardware Enablement
    • Kernel 6.3.8 with support for latest gen AMD (CPUs & GPUs), Intel (CPUs & GPUs), and NVIDIA (GPUs).
    • DualShock 4 Controller support enabled
    • Disable CONFIG_SECURITY_APPARMOR_RESTRICT_USERNS because it breaks Chromium snap
    • Enable CONFIG_VMD for laptops defaulting their NVMe controllers to RAID mode
    • Enable ATH11K Wi-Fi support
    • Enable MXC4005 accelerometer
    • Enable CONFIG_NFT_FIB_INET to allow Firewalld/nftables to work
  • Budgie
    • Budgie Desktop 10.7.2 featuring: improvements around Budgie Menu and optimizations around notifications, Budgie Screenshot from the 10.7 series, dual GPU launch support, and more!
    • Budgie Control Center
    • Nemo as default file manager
  • GNOME
    • GNOME Stack 43.5
    • Enable Dark Mode by Default
    • Set the default theme to Adwaita Dark
  • MATE
    • MATE 1.27
    • Updated to use Qogir-dark GTK theme and Papirus-dark icon theme
  • Plasma
    • Updated default styling including back rounded corners, integrated corner fixes from Breeze, improvements of margins, and more.
    • Plasma Desktop 5.27.5
    • KDE Gear 23.04.2
    • KDE Frameworks 5.106.0
    • Qt 5.15.9 KDE branch

If you have any issues or feedback regarding these testing ISOs, we encourage you to post them on the Solus 4.4 release task, found here, so they can be tracked and addressed.

If you are not an OpenCollective backer and want to be a beta tester for these release ISOs in the future, be sure to join at the Release Testers, Beta Tester or Crew tiers!

    JoshStrobl we have got some new treats for those subscribed to Release Testers, Beta Testers and Crew tiers

    It's been a couple hours now. By when should we know that our email isn't coming?

        After a couple of hours of installation/configuration it seems everything works great!
        I am happy to be back it feels nice 🙂
        I have a Ryzen 5 3600 and a AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT for info

        @EbonJaeger - sorry to bother you, but I've gotten no response from josh. I haven't received this email yet, and I'm a contributor at the crew level. Do you know who might be able to check on this for me?

        As I said in response to josh's first post a couple days ago, I suspected that there might be some confusion due to the fact that my contributions aren't coming from WetGeek. They're from my PayPal account, so they're probably identified as from jerry at wetgeek.net. But that email hasn't gotten anything, either.

        Thanks for any help with this -- I can't wait to build some VMs for these and test them.

          Solus 4.4 Harmony!!!! Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

          WetGeek Sorry, it's been a busy weekend. My understanding is there may be issues sending to or receiving emails at your personal domain, which is what Open Collective is tied to, correct? If so, yeah, a secondary or backup email address to send to would be helpful.

          I think you may be able to set a second email for Open Collective; worth looking in to. I don't deal with that part of the operation myself, so I'm not entirely sure what we can see on our end or how resending might work, but I can follow up with people tomorrow and find out.

              EbonJaeger I can follow up with people tomorrow and find out.

              Thanks for your help with this. I have no idea why such a problem exists with OpenCollective, but I'll connect with it and see if I can find out anything more. When I tried to set up Matrix, I had to use wetgeek at vivaldi.net for an email address, and that worked fine. Perhaps I can find some way for OpenCollective to use that, too.

                  WetGeek Perhaps I can find some way for OpenCollective to use that, too.

                  No problem! And hopefully; that sounds like the easiest solution.

                      EbonJaeger nd hopefully; that sounds like the easiest solution.

                      I wish. This is as far as I've gotten so far. Still waiting for the magic link.

                        WetGeek I checked the OpenCollective CSV export and identified that the issue is the result of duplicate entries between one-time donations and recurring tiered ones, so SendGrid processes the first one (donation) but ignores the second as a duplicate. I'll send you a "test" email from SendGrid for the Crew tier and dig around for the program I wrote a few years back that cleans up and corrects the CSV, worst case is I rewrite it 😃

                            JoshStrobl I'll send you a "test" email from SendGrid for the Crew tier

                            Yes, it has arrived without any drama. The additional one-time contribution was for a reason I can no longer remember. I'll get started making those VMs today. Thanks for your help with this.

                              @JoshStrobl : I have just one other question. We're used to the install-once-update-forever feature of Solus, and that's one of my favorites. But will that apply to the testing .ISOs as well? In other words, will VMs created using these morph into finished release versions as they're updated? Or will I need to download the release .ISOs when they are available and build new VMs using those?

                              If these will be long-term VMs, I'll spend more time on initial configuration, etc. If they'll be discarded and new VMs built using the release .ISOs, I'll make these functional, but not go overboard.

                              • ermo replied to this.

                                WetGeek

                                The more you test without finding issues, the higher the probability that the OC backer pre-release ISOs that are currently up will be indistinguishable from the proper release ISOs.

                                  JoshStrobl Hey Josh, just out of curiosity what changed your mind about finally using Nemo over Nautilus ?
                                  I seem to remember back in the day that you were somewhat opposed to adopting any other file manager for Budgie, even going as far as to suggest that you might develop one yourself from scratch

                                  BTW absolutely thrilled that you changed your mind

                                      seanragout Hey Josh, just out of curiosity what changed your mind about finally using Nemo over Nautilus ?

                                      Nautilus has continued to degrade over time. I've been used Nemo since Jan of last year or so (first trying Caja) and I ship it in Fedora Budgie Spin as well as the upcoming Fedora Onyx.

                                      BTW absolutely thrilled that you changed your mind

                                      To be fair, most of the operating systems that ship Budgie Desktop have standardized on Nemo. Ubuntu Budgie has been shipping it for ages, as an example, and we've generally been recommending it in Buddies of Budgie when folks want to start packaging Budgie Desktop for their favorite OS.

                                        I'm patently waiting for access to ISO's signed up on open collective yesterday after talking with Ermo last night in the matrix dev channel.