Solus

Reader supplied reviews for Solus Average rating 7.7 from 255 review(s) What are your thoughts on Solus? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- 4.94.84.74.64.44.34.14.03.999932017.04.18.01.2.1 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: 4.9 Rating: 10 Date: 2026-06-02 Country: Austria Votes: 4 After years of distro hopping and trying just about everything the Linux world has to offer, I've finally found a distribution that feels like home: Solus Linux. My current setup consists of an Intel NUC 11 with 32 GB of RAM and a Samsung 998 EVO NVMe SSD, running Solus with GNOME on a Btrfs filesystem. From the very first installation, the experience has been outstanding. The installation process is remarkably simple and fast. Within minutes, the system was installed, configured, and ready to use. There was no unnecessary complexity, no hunting for obscure settings, and no post-installation troubleshooting. Everything simply worked as expected. One of the first things that impressed me was the boot time. Installed on my NVMe drive, Solus boots incredibly fast. From pressing the power button to reaching a fully usable GNOME desktop takes only a matter of seconds. The system feels responsive at every level, whether launching applications, updating packages, or simply navigating the desktop. As a rolling-release distribution, Solus has a unique and highly organized update model. Friday is sync day, and updates arrive in a controlled and predictable manner. What I particularly appreciate is the transparency of the project. Every detail of the weekly updates is published on the Solus website, allowing users to see exactly what has changed, which packages were updated, and what improvements were made. This level of communication inspires confidence and demonstrates the professionalism of the team behind the distribution. Stability is where Solus truly shines. Rolling releases are often associated with breakage or unexpected issues, but that has not been my experience at all. In fact, I have never encountered a serious problem since installing Solus. Updates install cleanly, the system remains consistent, and everything continues to function exactly as it should. It delivers the freshness of a rolling release without the instability that many users fear. Another pleasant surprise was Secure Boot support. Setting up Secure Boot was straightforward and well-documented. What can sometimes become a frustrating process on other distributions was handled with minimal effort on Solus. No distribution is perfect, of course. There are a few packages I would like to see included in the repositories. Snapper, for example, is currently missing. As someone who uses Btrfs, having Snapper readily available would be a welcome addition. However, this is a relatively minor complaint and certainly not something that negatively impacts my overall experience. What ultimately makes Solus special is how cohesive the entire system feels. Every component appears thoughtfully integrated, and the developers clearly prioritize quality over quantity. Rather than overwhelming users with endless choices and complexity, Solus focuses on delivering a polished, reliable desktop experience. I've tried countless Linux distributions over the years. Some were exciting, some were innovative, and some were highly customizable. Yet none of them managed to keep me satisfied for long. Solus is different. It combines speed, stability, simplicity, and thoughtful design in a way that few distributions achieve. For me, Solus is a perfect 10 out of 10. More importantly, it's the distro where I finally feel at home. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 4.9 Rating: 10 Date: 2026-05-21 Country: United States Votes: 9 Installed Solus Gnome on my old Asus B75M-A mobo with Intel with an integrated GPU, Intel i-3220 CPU, WD HDD & 16GiB RAM and it installed without any problems. I have two printers, an Epson ET-ET-2840, and a Brother laser HL-L2305W and they both were recognized and installed with CUPS. Something that other Linux OS choices are "hit or miss" with the Brother Laser printer, even with the same version of CUPS, puzzling. I usually am not a fan of Gnome desktop but for some reason this latest offering on Solus suits me for some reason and I am going to stick with it for now. I like the colorization of the fonts in the terminal screen for a more eye appealing change as well. Solus actually works much smoother, and better IMHO, than some of the choices higher up in the list on DistroWatch. It may be just me but it seems that many of the new releases this year appear to have some annoying 'glitches'. I'm not sure if its due to so many of them being built on some else's OS and just pass along their bases problems. But Solus doesn't seem to have that problem here with me. Is it due to their independent background? Maybe so! Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 4.9 Rating: 10 Date: 2026-05-18 Country: United States Votes: 20 This is my SECOND review. I've been using this for several days now---at least from the release of this 4.9 version. I did a backup today-- used SYNCBACKUP-- a software that is NOT known for doing that great a job.. and in fact I had issues with it not working on CACHY OS and DEBIAN-- not even on MX... I used i on SOLUS today-- and WOW-- it was BLAZING FAST... which had to be to the CREDIT OF SOLUS 4.9 and NOT the credit of Syncbackup... because it takes HOURS on the other ditros for a simple backup of my 2T drive (which is only about 1T full... or a bit less). I was not only FAST-- but perfect-- did exactly as it should-- backing up ONLY the difference in source to Destination-- and everything came out GREAT. Solus BOOTS UP faster than ARCH-- and the WEEKLY updates-- JUST SUPER!!!!! That's ENOUGH--- all that arch upgrading sometimes 2- 3 times a DAY-- RIDICULOUS.. NO ONE-- no matter the excuse, NEEDS that many updates.. not for security and they DON"T need bleeding edge crap THAT soon. All this "need it now" stuff has RUINED software, computer use- CARS, and so much more... and it's just RIDICULOUS. I remember when a car was bought to the thought of " if it ain't broke- don't FIX it" for YEARS AND YEARS... Can't do that any more. NOW- to SOLUS-- I've been watching streaming video (Forged in Fire, Lone Ranger, and many others) between working on my backup stuff- and cleaning house.. and the VIDEO/AUDIO on this SOLUS is SO much crisper and beautiful... Everything I've tried- on it the last day or two-- has worked FLAWLESSLY-- and I've purposely tried things that FAILED completely on CACHY OS, mX and many more.... I feel more SECURE on this too-- since it's INDEPENDENT--- people don't mess with it as much as the BIG 3... All in all-- it installs FAST-- boots up VERY fast- and is zippy in everything-and SOLID as a ROCK--- even BETTER than DEBIAN... and WAY better than any ARCH.. (no matter what the archholes think).. I'm LOVING this stuff... the devlopers have definitely NAILED IT!!!! PERFECTION IN ACTION!!!! Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 255 reader reviews of Solus...