Solus 4.4 Budgie from basic user perspective (a short review)

Gepas

Disclosure: I am new to Solus. Newer used any version before 4.4. I have installed Solus on new home PC. Used it for about a month and for a basic tasks only (internet browsing, file managing, photo, video and documents viewing).

So:

+ Fully functional live media (working graphics drivers out of the box for AMD APU!)
+ Simple and fast OS installation (I believe that even someone truly new to computers should be able to do it)
+ Extremely fast boot time
+ Clean and intuitive user interface (simple setting up after OS install was also breeze to do)
+ (-) Software center is simple to use for updates and managing applications, clear prompt about dependencies that will be installed together with application (- but software center is lacking some applications or available versions is old, but then again, in most cases other alternatives can be found to replace these applications)
+ (-) Minimum preinstalled applications, but sufficient for most basic tasks (- just not for everything)
- + Firefox
- - (+) LibreOffice's user interface is not displayed properly, menu items is greyed out while being active (other than that seems to operate normally)
- - Celluloid (while it matches Budgie user interface nicely, it is too basic (no aspect ratio or crop adjustments) and prone to video tearing making it unusable (I installed VLC and haven't noticed any tearing with same videos)
- After screen starts go blank (in System Settings set time) VLC keyboard controls becomes unresponsive and video playback can only be resumed by using mouse (I haven't tested this with other applications but such behavior is annoying and could be a system wide bug)
- When Power options is activated with button on bottom right corner and Shutdown is pressed sometimes Power options menu disappears and nothing else happens but after repeating these steps PC shutdowns as expected
- Screen Lock is activated with Suspend and then password is required after waking up despite that Automatic Login is enabled and Automatic Screen Lock is disabled in System Settings

Summary:
Many big pluses for Solus 4.4 Budgie from basic user stand point. And minuses are just small bugs.
Still, bugs is very annoying for basic user and when home I AM basic user...

P.S. I haven't mentioned anything about Nemo because its the reason Solus 4.4 Budgie got my attention. I heard that Nemo has better configurability compared to Nautilus. And as previous Ubuntu user I was really annoyed by Nautilus lack of various settings. Well, Nemo didn't disappoint. But these previously mentioned bugs did. This is kind of when you notice the bug and you just can't unnotice it. Any ideas if any of these bugs can be solved in near future?

brent

Gepas This is kind of when you notice the bug and you just can't unnotice it. Any ideas if any of these bugs can be solved in near future?

software center is being reimagined as we speak and my Celluloid doesn't tear (still prefer VLC) and most of my menu items are not grayed out in Libre Office.
but you asked about bugs...I always see a couple in every distro I use and I work around them...I can't unsee them but I can keep at arm's length or modify my behavior. Philosophically we differ here.
I spent a week with Ubuntu Budgie and I wasn't expecting it to be so buggy. So much I stopped using it. Did I dial it in right? Who knows. Bugs seems so subjective. What you can live with/what you can't.
Things like you are talking about are usually solved pretty quick by Solus devs depending on if problem originates upstream.
I don't use any power settings so I got no perspective there, but good writeup. Welcome.

Solarmass

-but software center is lacking some applications or available versions is old, but then again, in most cases other alternatives can be found to replace these applications)

There is always flatpak option

Gepas LibreOffice's user interface is not displayed properly, menu items is greyed out while being active

Could be a theme issue. I am using a Plata theme (now outdated), so it's fine here.

Celluloid (while it matches Budgie user interface nicely, it is too basic (no aspect ratio or crop adjustments) and prone to video tearing making it unusable (I installed VLC and haven't noticed any tearing with same videos)

well, you usually don't change aspect ratio or crop video. I am using mpv (Celluloid is "based on it"), no tearing here, but you have to change its setting via config file.

Gepas After screen starts go blank (in System Settings set time) VLC keyboard controls becomes unresponsive and video playback can only be resumed by using mouse

Are you talking about screen-server? I don't use it, so never had such problem

Gepas When Power options is activated with button on bottom right corner and Shutdown is pressed sometimes Power options menu disappears and nothing else happens but after repeating these steps PC shutdowns as expected

it could be a bug, but I prefer the alternative shutdown applet called "user-indicator-redux", you can install it from SC.

Nemo is nice 🙂

murbert

Gepas The greyed out icons are likely a theming/icon pack issue. These can be changed in Budgie settings, available when right clicking the desktop

Gepas

brent
For me Solus made impression that it is very well suited for newcomers to Linux and even to computers overall. And this is no small feat. I myself prefer to have "no headaches" system at home. So this inspired me write review from this "please give me no headaches perspective". Because current Solus version seems to be so close to being that "no headaches" OS. I believe such quality will be welcomed by basic home PC users and also is desired for basic workstation users in business environment. So reducing bugs no mater how small can be very important.

From bit more "real word" perspective these "bugs" is nothing serious. For example as I expected greyed out icons in LibreOffice actually wasn't case for everybody (probably very isolated bug because if widespread such a bug would be too visible and would have been noticed and solved quickly). Even in my case icons look was corrected by simply changing theme settings (Can it be called a "bug" then?).

Anyway, Solus is a really good Linux distribution. And depending on what goals developer team has and how many effort can be given to this project... Well, it will be interesting to see what future brings.

brent

Solarmass @Gepas

Gepas, Solarmass is so right I forgot to say it that many 'bugs' are theme-related. It was the first thing I thought of when you mentioned the Libre Writer stuff but I forgot to say. It happens. sometimes you got to find the right combo of widget/iconand it irons out a hiccup or two sometimes.
@Solarmass GREAT response.
LONG LIVE NEMO

Gepas

Solarmass

well, you usually don't change aspect ratio or crop video

Usually not. But surprisingly quite often adjustments can be necessary for videos to be showed properly on ultrawide monitor. Celluloid has absolutely no adjustments for video. Even basic user sometimes may want to do things like adjust playback speed or rotate video (for videos made with phones...).

Are you talking about screen-server?

No. Problem happens when screen starts to black out after period of inactivity. This really is a bug. But can by made less frequent by increasing set time for inactivity.

I prefer the alternative shutdown applet called "user-indicator-redux", you can install it from SC.

Big thanks for hint about this applet. Really much more practical for menu to be shown where button is pressed not in middle of screen.

Note: I am not complaining about anything. And I am very impressed with Solus OS. Especially with that how it can be comfortably used "out of the box" with minimal tweaks. Just thought "Wouldn't it be nice if NO TWEAKS would be necessary for basic user?" I am sure I am not first because Solus seems to be going this way (and popular commercial products claims to be this way while they are not...)

As for more advanced users, they always will find some nuances despite how perfect OS would be.

Solarmass

brent yea, unfortunately on linux there is always a theme issue. We have gtk and qt apps and also flatpak apps...

e.g. qbittorrent on Solus Budgie has white theme and while there are some workarouds to make it dark I just waiting when they add internal dark theme into it.

qsl

Budgie had their finger on the pulse from the last iteration. Some minor "I WANT THIS THERE!" customizable quirks (where Plasma was probably overkill), but you couldn't help but feel impressed someone really thought through how a OS should operate (make life easier and get out of the way).

Alas, I am planning to install with some hardware changes that haven't happened yet; I haven't given the newest version a spin.

Regardless, Solus would be my choice for Linux distros.

Miko

Gepas I think, when it comes to linux, every user will have to do "some" tweaks. Sure, they can range from very small things like setting click policy to big-big stuff. I'd also agree that Solus requires very minimal tweaks for basic user, it's definitely one of the best distros when it comes to this criteria.

But personally I think the "no tweaks" is kind of an utopia. People have different tastes and requirements. And they also have different hardware that might react to given OS in unique way.

It's also nice to read a reviews like that. I enjoyed reading it!

Solarmass

Gepas Usually not. But surprisingly quite often adjustments can be necessary for videos to be showed properly on ultrawide monitor. Celluloid has absolutely no adjustments for video. Even basic user sometimes may want to do things like adjust playback speed or rotate video (for videos made with phones...).

I just quickly googled these settings for mpv. Good news you can do it with shortcuts, and it also works for Celluloid.

Shift + A Force a different aspect ratio for the currently playing media.

https://superuser.com/questions/1657261/how-can-i-change-playback-speed-of-mpv-video-player

[ and ] for playback speed

Looks like there are no default shortcuts for rotation video, but you can set it in the config file, here some links:

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=177347
https://old.reddit.com/r/mpv/comments/evhfc1/is_it_possible_to_rotate_a_video/
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1212733/rotate-video-by-a-keyboard-shortcut-in-mpv

Gepas No. Problem happens when screen starts to black out after period of inactivity. This really is a bug. But can by made less frequent by increasing set time for inactivity.

or you can set Screen Blank setting to never. BTW you can report this issue, not sure if it's a known bug.

Gepas Big thanks for hint about this applet. Really much more practical for menu to be shown where button is pressed not in middle of screen.

Yes, I prefer this applet too!

Gepas Note: I am not complaining about anything.

oh, I am complaining about Solus/Budgie issues a lot on the various Solus/Budgie social media 😇