Solus 3 Editions

Solus 3 Released

August 15, 2017

On behalf of the Solus team and community, we’re extremely proud to announce the immediate availability of Solus 3. This is the third iteration of Solus since our move to become a rolling release operating system. Unlike the previous iterations, however, this is a release and not a snapshot. We’ve now moved away from the “regular snapshot” model to accommodate the best hybrid approach possible - feature rich releases with explicit goals and technology enabling, along with the benefits of a curated rolling release operating system.

General

Default Applications

All of our editions feature:

  • Firefox 55.0.1
  • LibreOffice 5.4.0.3
  • Rhythmbox 3.4.1 with the latest release of the Alternative Toolbar extension
  • Thunderbird 52.2.1

Our Budgie and GNOME Editions ship with GNOME MPV 0.12 and our MATE Edition ships with VLC 2.2.6.

Hardware and Kernel Enablement

This new major version of Solus is now based on the latest stable branch of the Linux kernel, 4.12.7. This switch enables various hardware improvements for the latest AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA hardware. Users of the existing linux-lts kernel will continue to receive updates indefinitely, with the next major update to this branch scheduled to land in or around September.

Furthermore, we’ve enabled AppArmor LSM by default to provide functionality for snapd confining, as well as the introduction of a fully functioning Linux Security Module within our kernel builds.

Mesa has seen an upgrade to 17.1.6 and libtxc_dxtn has been updated to help improve reliability and graphical performance in some games.

Bluetooth controllers are now automatically enabled and our bluez now uses a stateless configuration. Users of wireless Logitech keyboards are able to utilize them during dm-crypt unlock of an LVM / LUKS rootfs.

To improve the out-of-the-box support for printing and scanning, we now ship with sane-backends, hplip drivers, and Canon UFRII LT printer drivers. Our hplip has been upgraded to 3.17.7, which improves cups support, recognition of Solus by hp-check, and udev rule location fixes.

Multimedia Upgrades

This release delivers ffmpeg 3.3.3, the latest in the 3.3 series, offering improvements such as a native Opus encoder, new multimedia filters, and VAAPI-accelerated MPEG-2 and VP8 encoding. We’ve also enabled support in ffmpeg for cdio, openal, webp, and other libraries.

Support for Snaps

Snaps

This release features out-of-the-box support for snaps, universal software packages for Linux. Support for snaps relieves pressure from software vendors to target a specific platform by sharing a unified target across all Linux distributions. For our users, they gain access to a wide variety of software that may not meet our package inclusion criteria, such as server software, as well as enabling an improved distribution method for Third Party software.

Support for Snaps was made possible due to fantastic cross-platform collaboration between Canonical’s Snapcraft and Ubuntu teams and Solus, which is the first non-Ubuntu distribution to feature full snap confinement leveraging AppArmor, offering feature parity with the reference Ubuntu implementation.

Budgie

Budgie

Solus ships with our brand new release of the Budgie 10.x series, Budgie 10.4, as well as introducing our new branding defaults, adopting the stunning Adapta GTK Theme and Papirus Icon Theme, as well as complementing those design changes by adopting the Noto Sans font. We’ve also moved the primary panel from the top of the display to the bottom and tweaked panel widget spacing to make Budgie feel more spacious.

Whether it was implementing features, fixes, or improving / expanding translations, the Budgie community was integral to this Budgie release. So thank you to everyone that has contributed.

Animations

Budgie 10.4 now has maximize and unmaximize animations for applications.

Alt+Tab

Budgie 10 Alt Tab

In this release of Budgie, the alt+tab switcher will now prefer the theme icon instead of the X11 icon where possible. Shift+Alt+Tab support has also been implemented, enabling you to go backwards in the Alt+Tab dialog.

Applets

Night Light

Budgie 10 Night Light

This release introduces a new applet, Night Light, which can help reduce eye strain by reducing your display’s blue light by making your screen “warmer”. This applet integrates into the Night Light functionality provided in Mutter 3.24.x and provides quick access to toggling Night Light on/off, as well as:

  • Changing the schedule between “Sunset to Sunrise” and “Manual” (which is configured in GNOME Control Center)
  • Temperature of the display when enabled
  • One-click access to launch your Display settings

Places

Budgie 10 Places

The Places Indicator applet also received some love this release, with a new option to always expand the places section when the applet is shown. The whole Places section header is now a clickable button, making toggling the section easier. The Places Applet icon has also been changed to a more apt folder icon, better representing “places” rather than “disks” as previously presented.

And More!

  • The Calendar widget in Raven will now remove the date selection if you change the month or year.
  • The Icon Tasklist applet no longer has a list of “derper” applications for which we’d override the icon. If a .desktop file is found, use the icon referenced in it.
  • The User Indicator now has updated and refined iconography thanks to Sam Hewitt.

Budgie Menu

Budgie 10 Budgie Menu

Building upon the lessons learned when (and inspiration from) implementing the Brisk Menu for MATE, searching has been completely overhauled. We now support the use of categories for searching and provide a predictable, sane search mechanism. Items that previously would not show up as expected, such as searching for “Displays”, are now resolved.

For items that would show up in excess, we now de-duplicate search results to only showing unique entries when we’re in “search mode” or “super compact” mode (in other words, no headers or sidebar categories).

We now dynamically compute scores for a given entry during search in relation to the search term. Assuming the entry is relevant, we’ll display results in a given order and allow terms to match and display higher up in the list depending on how close it is to the term, the contents, how much a string is matched, etc.

Panels

Vertical Panels

Budgie 10 Left and Right Panels

In Budgie 10.4, you can now set vertical panels on the left and right sides of your display. Popovers will correctly indicate (with its “tail”) the point of origin, we’ve done extensive work to ensure all of our animations and applets will display and adjust depending on if they are on (or originating from) a horizontal or vertical panel, and Raven will account for right-side panels and slide out from underneath the panel, as well as anchor to left panels when no horizontal or right panel exists.

Transparency

With these new panels, you will now also be able to control the panel transparency (via our new Settings app) with three modes:

  • None: The panel is always opaque.
  • Dynamic: The panel is opaque when there is a maximized window on the workspace, or Raven is open, otherwise it’s transparent.
  • Always: The panel is always transparent.

Docks

Budgie 10 Budgie Panel Dockmode

As if Budgie panels couldn’t improve more, we’ve also introduced a Dock mode for panels, enabling you to put a dock on any side of your display!

This Dock mode also uses a custom CSS class, which means theme developers have the ability to implement custom styling.

Popovers

For Budgie 10.4, we implemented the Budgie.Popover widget, enabling us to replace our usage of Gtk.Popover and fix a long-standing issue with inconsistent popover animations, for example Budgie Menu animating across the screen if the user’s panel (and the menu applet) was at the bottom.

Furthermore, this Popover widget enables more granular positioning regardless of its origin (top, bottom, left, or right). This granular positioning helped to provide us the opportunity to implement panels for all sides of your display!

Settings

Budgie 10 Budgie Settings

Budgie 10.4 moves Settings out of Raven and into a dedicated application. This new Budgie Settings application enables us to improve the user experience of managing panels, applets, and their respective settings, as well as providing us the opportunity to describe what particular settings may do, with the classic example being “Disable unredirection of windows”. To open Budgie Settings, the behavior of the Settings button at the bottom of Raven has been changed to open Budgie Settings instead of GNOME Control Center. You can also pin our Settings application to your panel, like you would any application, and launch it via Budgie Menu.

Budgie 10 Budgie Panel Applets

In the image above, you can see the management of the Bottom Panel. We have split panel management into two sections, with Applets being the primary section (as we anticipate users primarily making changes to applets) and Settings. Similar to the behavior of prior Budgie releases, you can move applets around using the up or down arrow buttons, or delete them. These buttons are positioned at the top of the list to make them more easily accessible for lower-resolution displays.

To the right of the applet list, you have a dedicated “Add applet” button and settings for the selected applet below.

Budgie 10 Budgie Panel Settings

In the Settings section of a panel, a multitude of options are exposed, such as:

  • Position of the panel
  • Size of the panel (height for vertical panels, width for horizontal panels)
  • Auto-hide settings (including Intellihide, which is great for Dock mode)
  • Transparency settings (as discussed in the Panels -> Transparency section of this blog post)
  • Shadow (a decorative drop shadow)
  • Stylize region
  • Dock mode
Budgie 10 Budgie Settings Autostart

Budgie Settings also enables you to manage the autostarting of applications, eliminating the need for a secondary tool such as GNOME Tweak Tool.

Other Fixes and Improvements

In addition to the above mentioned goodies, some other fixes include:

  • The Clock applet will now only redraw when the label contents would change. This resolves unnecessary redraws of the applet.
  • daemon: Fixed the order of left-side window buttons, ensuring that the window decoration style is consistent between native and CSD window decorations.
  • wm: Ensuring we purge old backgrounds from the cache.

GNOME

Gnome

Solus GNOME Edition has received numerous improvements to its curated, out-of-the-box GNOME experience, as well as featuring our new default GTK and Icon Themes, Adapta and Papirus respectively.

Solus GNOME Edition ships with the latest stable releases of the GNOME stack, such as GNOME Shell 3.24.3, Mutter 3.24.4, and Nautilus 3.24.2, as well as continuing to provide default extensions such as Dash to Dock, Impatience, and TopIcons Plus.

A Searchable Command Palette

Full-size image

Solus GNOME Edition now ships with Plotinus, the searchable command palette for GTK3 applications, and is enabled out-of-the-box. Plotinus makes searching menu items faster and keyboard-driven use of apps easier than ever. Plotinus can be launched using it’s default keybinding, which is Ctrl+Shift+P or Ctrl+Alt+P depending on your keyboard layout.

General Fixes and Improvements

Calendar and Online Account Improvements

Solus GNOME Edition ships an updated GNOME Online Accounts and Evolution Data Server, resolving issues with Calendar syncing for Google accounts that some users faced.

Nautilus

Solus GNOME Edition ships with a patched Nautilus that re-introduces the graphical option for the “Enter Location” option that was removed in Nautilus, enabling users to more easily access the functionality to type a location to navigate.

Other Fixes

Among the above mentioned items, we’ve also resolved the following issues:

  • Grabbing of previous disabled shortcuts for media keys should now be resolved thanks to a gnome-settings-daemon upgrade.
  • Users were unable to change their password via Users in GNOME Control Center.
  • gvfs was unable to see blocking processes.

MATE

Mate

General Fixes and Improvements

Caja

Caja has been patched to support whitelisting and trusting symlinked vendor-provided .desktop files. This enables us to provide default desktop icons for items such as the Installer.

Lastly

A message from Ikey, Solus Project founder

I would like to personally thank everyone that has supported, and those who continue to support our projects. With your support, you’ve enabled me to work full time on Solus. It is a rare privilege indeed to be able to work on that which you love, to make your passion your life’s work. Without your support, and without the community that empowers Solus, we would never be the project we have become. Here’s to a fantastic 2017, and a glorious, open and collaborative future for all of us.

Press

Press can obtain our Press Release PDF and Media Pack via our Press Center.

Changelog of ISO

Packages added to this release:

  • adapta-gtk-theme
  • apparmor
  • bind-utils
  • binutils-libs
  • budgie-desktop-branding-material
  • canon-ufriilt-common
  • dmidecode
  • font-roboto-ttf
  • giflib
  • gpart
  • groff
  • hplip-drivers
  • hunspell-en
  • imlib2
  • libcaca
  • libdmapsharing
  • libedit
  • libglade
  • libieee1284
  • libquvi
  • libselinux
  • libssh
  • libssh2
  • libunwind
  • linux-current
  • lsof
  • mariadb-libs
  • net-snmp
  • noto-sans-ttf
  • onboard
  • openal-soft
  • papirus-icon-theme
  • qt5-base
  • qtstyleplugins
  • sane-backends
  • sdl2
  • slick-greeter
  • snapd
  • snappy
  • squashfs-tools
  • talloc

Packages removed from this release:

  • arc-firefox-theme
  • arc-gtk-theme
  • arc-icon-theme
  • faba-icon-theme
  • faba-icon-theme-mono
  • glew
  • gnome-tweak-tool
  • gtk2-engine-murrine
  • lightdm-gtk-greeter
  • linux-lts
  • moka-icon-theme

Changes in this release:

gnome-user-docs

libgnome-desktop

lz4

kbd

evince

gd

libnspr

mesalib

gpgme

gobject-introspection

libsndfile

samba

clr-boot-manager

libnss

gnome-calendar

fontconfig

gdk-pixbuf

python3

xorg-driver-input-libinput

openvpn

solus-artwork

libreoffice

baselayout

youtube-dl

geoclue

glibmm

swig

bash-completion

gtk3

mpv

os-installer

libdrm

gnutls

pcre2

gvfs

ca-certs

nvidia-340-glx-driver

npth

ghostscript

libcairo

xorg-server

breeze-cursor-theme

unrar

gnome-control-center

gnome-online-accounts

expat

gnome-disk-utility

gspell

bluez

libinput

libxslt

libgtksourceview

libicu

kmod

pisi

nano

libgtop

hwdata

glibc

gnome-settings-daemon

poppler

gnome-mpv

linux-firmware

modem-manager

xdg-utils

appstream-data

libwebkit-gtk

libgxps

upower

gnome-terminal

libgdata

libqmi

systemd

foomatic-db

gutenprint

libgcrypt

bash

nvidia-304-glx-driver

doflicky

openssh

openssl

libarchive

mutagen

jansson

accountsservice

libgweather

glib2

cryptsetup

firefox

gnome-themes-standard

libtiff

lsb-release

libvte

libmbim

libplist

networkmanager-openvpn

opus

libpcre

dracut

libcroco

nvidia-glx-driver

kerberos

file-roller

mutter

graphite2

inxi

solus-sc

evolution-data-server

gnome-keyring

grep

freetype2

iso-codes

libtasn1

gnupg

ffmpeg

alsa-utils

nautilus

man-db

lightdm

sudo

cups-filters

gedit

rhythmbox

linux-tools

curl

gcc

solus-hardware-config

lame

alsa-lib

budgie-desktop-branding

librsvg

budgie-desktop

gparted

coreutils

sqlite3

rhythmbox-alternative-toolbar

libsoup

llvm

cups-pk-helper

zimg

kernel-glue

openldap

eog

gnome-screensaver

libmwaw

libbluray

libx11

thunderbird

pulseaudio

nettle

xorg-driver-video-nouveau

gnome-session

totem-pl-parser

alsa-plugins

udisks