 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1112, 10 March 2025 |
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Welcome to this year's 10th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Rolling release distributions face a difficult task. On the one hand they are expected to be up to date with current software versions, able to showcase the latest features in the open source community. On the other hand, rolling releases also need to strive for some degree of reliability, even while packaging a constant flow of new software. It's a difficult balance to maintain and, this week, we take a look at Solus, a rolling release distribution which strives to be current, user friendly, and reliable. Read on to learn more about this distribution and the Budgie desktop it uses as its default interface. In our News section we talk about the UBports team publishing an unscheduled update to fix a security bug while another mobile operating system, postmarketOS, considers a name change. Also in mobile Linux news, Debian software will soon be supplied as part of Android. Then we talk about Secure Boot and distributions which can be run on machines with Secure Boot enabled. Plus we are pleased to share the new releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. Finally, we touch upon a topic which has been debated back and forth over the past two weeks: Mozilla's new policies and documentation concerning ownership of data and the potential sale of data. Some Firefox users are considering alternatives to Mozilla's web browser and we'd like to hear which one is your favourite browser. To all of our readers, we wish you a terrific week and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
Solus 4.7 Budgie
Solus is an independently developed, rolling release distribution which uses the eopkg package manager. The distribution is available in several desktop flavours: Budgie, GNOME, Plasma, and Xfce. (The Xfce edition is marked as being a beta flavour.) Each of these editions is built to run on x86_64 processors exclusively.
The latest snapshot of Solus ships with Budgie 10.9.2, GNOME 47, Plasma 6.2, or Xfce 4.20, depending on which edition we download. The ISO files vary a little in size, but are generally around 3.0GB.
One of the main highlights of the release announcement for Solus 4.7 was the recommendation for people to switch from using the Solus Software Centre to one of the desktop-specific software centres, such as GNOME Software or Discover:
For audio and video multimedia playback, we offer software out-of-the-box that caters specifically to our desired experience for each edition.
Budgie and GNOME editions ship with Rhythmbox for audio playback, with the latest release of the Alternate Toolbar extension to provide a more modern user experience. Budgie and GNOME ship with Celluloid for video playback. Xfce ships with Parole for multimedia playback. Plasma ships with Elisa for audio playback and Haruna for video playback.
Try a new Software Centre: We encourage you to try one of the new software centres as a replacement for solus-sc (Solus Software Centre). A new software center gets you out-of-the-box support for Flatpaks, and better app descriptions through Appstream metadata support.
The release announcement went on to mention a few known issues with the latest version of the distribution:
There are a few known issues: Plasma ISO requires creation of a Kwallet key file before connecting to a network. When running eopkg check, linux-current and linux-lts may show as broken. These are false positives, and can be disregarded. Sometimes there is no image when booting GNOME in a VM. GNOME sometimes boots to black screen and X cursor in VM This appears to be an upstream bug. We will keep an up to date list of known issues for 4.7 on the forums.
Live desktop and installing
I downloaded the Budgie edition of Solus which is 3.0GB in size. Booting from this ISO quickly starts the Budgie desktop. The wallpaper shows a city skyline in the background. A dark panel is placed horizontally across the bottom of the screen. On the panel we find a two-pane application menu, quick-launch buttons, and a system tray. The desktop is home to three icons. One icon opens the file manager to show our home directory, another icon opens the Trash folder, and the third icon launches the Calamares system installer.
I soon discovered double-clicking an icon would launch its application twice; Budgie uses single-click actions to open folders and launch applications.
Solus 4.7 -- The Budgie application menu
(full image size: 1.8MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Solus makes use of the Calamares graphical system installer which smoothly walks us through a handful of configuration steps. We're asked to pick our language and timezone from lists. We pick our keyboard layout and are offered the choice of manual or guided disk partitioning. The manual approach is pretty easy to navigate. The guided option will, by default, set up two partitions (/boot on a FAT filesystem and root on an ext4 filesystem). We have the option of requesting a swap partition be created and can switch the ext4 root partition for either Btrfs or F2FS. Finally, we are asked to make up a username and password for ourselves. Calamares then quickly copied the Solus packages to the hard drive and offered to restart the computer.
Early impressions
My brand new copy of Solus booted to a graphical login screen. The login page is light on options, it's pretty much just there to let us pick a user account and put in our password. Signing in brings us back to the Budgie desktop.
The Budgie desktop was fairly responsive for me. There were a few more visual effects than I'd usually enjoy, but nothing which slowed down the desktop or got in the way. The default fonts are a little smaller than I'd like, but this can be fixed in one of the distribution's two settings panels. I'd like to acknowledge that, while smaller than average, fonts are usually displayed in high-contrast (white on black or black on white) which makes them show up clearly.
On the subject of colours and clarity, I'd like to discuss Budgie's theme, or lack of theme. The colours are all over the place on the Budgie desktop and one application's theme is often the inverse of (or unrelated to) another's theme. For example, the terminal application displays white text on a black background (which is fairly typical), LibreOffice puts black text on a white background (also fairly typical), but then the gedit text editor uses grey font on a blue background for no apparent reason. In the media applications, Rhythmbox uses black font on a white background, but the Celluloid media player uses white text on a black background.
Solus 4.7 -- Conflicting colours
(full image size: 372kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Even the two settings panels are opposite to each other. The Budgie Control Centre (aka GNOME Settings) uses a light theme, but the Budgie Desktop Settings panel uses a dark theme. There are two file managers - Nemo uses a light theme throughout by default while Caja looks completely broken with black text on a black background in the main pane while the menu bar uses a light theme. This makes for a jarring visual experience throughout the desktop when using the default theme.
Solus 4.7 -- Nemo, Caja, and GNOME Help on Budgie
(full image size: 883kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Hardware
I tested Solus in VirtualBox and on a laptop. I found the distribution worked well in both environments, running smoothly, and capable of booting in both UEFI and Legacy BIOS modes. When running on the laptop my media shortcut keys worked, audio and networking functioned without any issues, and my touchpad detected taps as clicks. Scrolling on the touchpad defaults to "natural" (inverse) scrolling, but can be changed in the Budgie Control Centre to use classic scrolling.
The distribution is middle-weight, taking up 765MB of RAM when signed into the Budgie desktop and taking up 7.1GB of disk space for a fresh install. (The 7.1GB of disk space doesn't include any swap partition we might have created.)
Included software
The Budgie edition of Solus uses a two-pane application menu with software categories placed to the left and launchers to the right. Unlike most application menus, Budgie makes us click on a category to see its contents, we cannot simply hover the mouse over a category. This makes browsing the menu less fluid, but it also keeps us from getting lost due to a quick finger slip on the mouse.
Solus 4.7 -- Running LibreOffice and Nemo
(full image size: 94kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The menu contains the Firefox browser, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, and the GNOME Calendar application. Celluloid and Rhythmbox are included along with popular media codecs. There are two file managers, as I mentioned above: Caja and Nemo. Nemo seems to be the default and its icon is featured on the Budgie panel.
We can also find common tools like a text editor, document viewer, and security key manager in the menu. There is an icon called Help which opens the GNOME Help application which shares tips for navigating the GNOME desktop. This feels a little out of place on the Budgie desktop, but the two desktop environments do share a lot of applications.
Solus ships with the GNU command line utilities, manual pages, the systemd init software, and version 6.12 of the Linux kernel.
I found that Rhythmbox played music files with no issues. Celluloid would also play audio files, but when I tried to play videos the player's window remained blank while I could hear the audio from the video playing. This is an issue I've had with Celluloid a few times now, across multiple distributions and desktops. I'm not sure if it's an issue with the application itself, or if distributions are not including all the needed dependencies. Later, I installed VLC and it played videos perfectly.
There is a networking icon in the system tray, however clicking it (left-clicking or right-clicking) did nothing. To change network settings or connect to wireless networks I had to open the Solus Control Centre (GNOME Settings) and access its network options.
Settings
As I mentioned earlier, the Budgie edition of Solus ships with two separate settings panels. The Budgie Control Centre, which is a rebranded copy of GNOME Settings, covers lower-level operating system settings. We can work with user accounts, printers, networking, privacy settings, and mouse pointer behaviour from the Budgie Control Centre.
Solus 4.7 -- The two settings panels
(full image size: 990kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
The second settings panel is called Budgie Desktop Settings. From this second panel we can adjust the visual elements of Budgie, including its widgets, mouse cursors, window button layout, and fonts. We can also adjust the location and contents of the panel.
The two panels don't have much overlap and, as long as we can remember "Control Centre" handles lower level options while "Desktop Settings" manages the visual elements, it's usually not too confusing to have two separate panels. There were moments though where I'd find myself trying to remember if things like mouse pointer speed were a desktop feature or a underlying feature.
Software management
When we software updates become available a notification appears on the desktop letting us know. Despite the suggestion for users to move away from the Solus Software Centre in the release announcement, it is still the default tool for managing packages on the Budgie edition.
Solus 4.7 -- The software centre
(full image size: 1.3MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Solus Software Centre has six tabs - Home for exploring for new applications; Updates to see and install new packages; Installed to see what packages are on the system and remove items; Third-party for fetching proprietary applications such as Google Chrome, Spotify, and Slack with there being about two dozen options in total; Search for finding an item directly by name; and Settings for disabling meta data downloads and changing the frequency of checks for new packages (the default frequency is once per hour).
My first day running Solus there were 47 updates, reaching about 550MB in size. Being a rolling release distribution means Solus will update packages frequently and may use a lot of bandwidth.
I'd like to mention the Solus Software Centre handles both applications and low-level packages, it's an all-in-one solution for managing software. Or at least it handles all packages in the Solus repositories, acting as a good front-end for the eopkg package manager. The Solus Software Centre does not have any integration with Flatpak packages.
Flatpak is installed, but we need to work with it from the command line (or install another software centre, as the Solus release announcement suggested). There are no Flatpak packages on the system by default, though the Flathub repository is enabled for us, providing us with immediate access to portable packages.
I checked and found there was no Snap support included in the Solus distribution by default.
Conclusions
On the whole, my time with Solus went smoothly. The distribution provided great hardware support, the desktop was responsive, and the repositories had the applications I wanted to use.
While much of my trial with Solus was a positive experience, I ran into several minor issues which left a bad aftertaste in my mouth and prevented me from wanting to extend my time with the distribution. Looking back on the week I realized that the positive and negative experiences were easily divided into two groups. Almost everything positive I enjoyed about Solus - the hardware support, the quick package management, the system installer, the up to date packages, and the medium-sized collection of software - were all lower-level, mostly behind-the-scenes technical choices. The negative experiences almost all came from Budgie.
Budgie is, for me, far too inconsistent in its visual elements - the theme is all over the place. There are a few too many visual effects tugging at my eyes when I'm manipulating windows. The visual elements are too varied and the default fonts unusually small compared to other desktop environments. I wasn't a fan of the multi-layered window control menus (the menus which appear when right-clicking on an open application's task switcher icon). I also wasn't a fan of having two settings panels, one borrowed from GNOME and one for Budgie-specific settings, while most desktops just need one.
Using Solus felt like visiting a convention booth where the technical product sitting in the background is good, but the salesperson presenting it is fumbling. I want them to stop talking and get out of the way so I can focus on enjoying the product. Budgie sitting on top of Solus was like that for me - functional, but frequently annoying while the core technology behind the scenes was doing a good job.
I don't think Solus, the underlying distribution, does anything particularly different or eye-catching compared with other rolling release desktop distributions. It doesn't have boot environments or default to an advanced filesystem, or take any massive leaps forward. But that is what I grew to appreciate about Solus. It's an unusually stable, unusually simple to use rolling release distribution. Everything is pretty straight forward, everything works (at the lower levels), everything installed and updated smoothly. It's just a shame I was convinced to run Budgie instead of one of the other available desktop editions.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was an HP DY2048CA laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 512GB solid state drive
- Memory: 8GB of RAM
- Wireless network device: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 + BT Wireless network card
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Visitor supplied rating
Solus has a visitor supplied average rating of: 7.5/10 from 202 review(s).
Have you used Solus? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS plans rebranding effort, Debian coming to Android
The UBports team have published an unscheduled security update for UBports 20.04. The new update, OTA-8, also rolls out VoLTE for a small number of phones. "Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA-8 contains only a minimal number of changes due to our current focus on Ubuntu base OS upgrade. That said, we still have a few interesting changes: Support for VoLTE (Voice over LTE) is being rolled out again on Volla Phone X23 and Volla Phone 22 running Halium 12 port. Support for more devices will be rolled out in the future. (Credit goes to Nikita (@Notkit) from Volla). The ability to remove a picture from a contact entry is added.... Additional information and a list of supported devices can be found in the release announcement.
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The postmarketOS project has announced support for several new devices, including the Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 10 LTE, Samsung Galaxy S10+, Motorola Moto ES, Motorola Moto E5 Plus, Khadas VIM3, and the HMD Global Nokia 1 Plus. The project is also searching for a new identity and is inviting people to submit suggestions for a new name: "We plan to give postmarketOS a new name. Back in 2017 when postmarketOS was first getting off the ground, this project was smaller scale. Just a port of Alpine Linux to devices abandoned by their manufacturers. Now, the year is 2025 and while many of our ports are still for devices past their manufacturer's supported period, we also have a lot of devices running postmarketOS far before they reach their official End of Life. For the Fairphone 4 and Fairphone 5 we even had ports on the day they were released! This is one of the reasons why we are looking for a new name. Another is that postmarketOS is not easy to pronounce. It is five syllables, including the OS at the end." People can send suggestions through the project's name submission form.
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While Android is a member of the Linux family, it is an unusual branch of the Linux family tree with not much in common with Linux distributions which run on desktop and server machines. The gap is narrowing, however, as Android will soon supply a terminal application which runs Debian in a virtual machine. It's FOSS reports: "We have known of Google working on a native Linux Terminal app since late 2024. It incorporates the Android Virtualization Framework (AVF) and runs a local virtual machine powered by Debian that allows it to execute various Linux commands. Earlier this year, someone even managed to run Doom in it, showcasing the ability of the native terminal app to run graphical applications. And now, a recent report by Android Police has revealed that Google has quietly rolled out the Terminal app to some Android devices." This brings us a step closer to a merged ecosystem where mobile devices can be docked and used as workstation computers.
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Linux distributions which work with Secure Boot
Staying-secure asks: Can you recommend any distros which work with Secure Boot without any fiddling with the BIOS?
DistroWatch answers: Secure Boot is a security feature which allows the computer's firmware to verify the source of the software it is loading into memory. This is done by testing the signature of the software (such as a boot loader or kernel) against verification keys. The idea is that if the software is of unknown origin, or it has been tampered with, then the verification process will fail and the computer will refuse to boot.
Most of the big-name Linux distributions have support for Secure Boot and have worked with Secure Boot for several years. Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora, and Debian all support installing with Secure Boot enabled. Typically, child distributions of these projects will also work with Secure Boot. Arch Linux previously had Secure Boot support, but (according to the project's wiki) dropped support about nine years ago.
Most Linux distributions which work with Secure Boot do so using a program called a shim which does some basic verification at boot time before loading software into memory. Though the existence of the shim package is not proof a distribution will work with Secure Boot, it is a good starting point. You can find distributions which include the shim package on our Search page.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Smoothwall Express 3.1 SP6
Neal P. Murphy has announced the release of Smoothwall Express 3.1 SP6, an updated build of the project's specialist Linux distribution for firewalls and routers with a custom web-based configuration interface: "The Smoothwall Express Team announce the release of Update 12. We updated a few packages. Kernel and system notes: Linux kernel was bumped to version 4.4.302; linux-firmware was bumped to 20241210; since SWE 3.1 is now easier to build on itself, Linux v4.4.302 was built to change NR_CPUS to 32 which should be large enough for the near future - this will enable quicker system builds; the SO_REUSEPORT define was restored in the kernel headers (version 3.4.104 to maintain compatibility with libraries and programs from the original SWE 3.1 release); nftables support is included in the kernel, while the system still uses iptables, this will facilitate migration in the future; a few steps were taken to begin removing PPTP from the system, Microsoft declared it insecure many years ago; the location of netfilter timeouts in /proc changed, requiring minor changes in rc.network; the new version of dhcpcd wants/requires user 'dhcpcd' to be present; /etc/passwd was suitably changed...." Continue to the release announcement for a complete list of changes.
Linux From Scratch 12.3
Linux From Scratch (LFS) is a project that provides you with the steps necessary to build your own custom Linux system from source code. The latest version of the project's handbook, version 12.3, introduces a handful of package updates and new security patches. "The LFS release includes updates to binutils-2.44 and glibc-2.41. In total, 48 packages were updated since the last release and extensive updates to the text have been made throughout the book to improve readability. The Linux kernel has also been updated to version 6.13.4. Overall there have been over 100 commits to LFS since the previous stable version of the book. Packages that have security updates include: expat, jinja2, Python, openssl, and vim. See a complete description of security updates since the last stable release. In BLFS new packages that were added include: sysmon3/sysmond, zxing-cpp, kdsoap-ws-discovery-client and plasma-activities-stats for kio-extras, docbook-xsl-ns, libgstgtk4 in support of Snapshot, cargo-c needed for librsvg, LuaJIT to replace Lua 5.2 and glslc from shaderc needed for gtk4." The release announcement offers additional information.
Clonezilla Live 3.2.1-9
Steven Shiau has announced the release of Clonezilla Live 3.2.1-9, the latest stable version of the project's Debian-based specialist live Linux distribution designed for partitioning, backups and disk-cloning tasks. This release drops support for the i386 architecture due to Debian's decision to stop providing i386 kernel packages: "This release of Clonezilla live (3.2.1-9) includes major enhancements and bug fixes. Enhancements and changes since 3.2.0-5: the underlying GNU/Linux operating system has bee upgraded, this release is based on the Debian 'Sid' repository as of 2025-03-03; as mentioned in the Debian release mailing list, the i386 Linux kernel packages were dropped in our upstream, the Debian 'Sid' repository, so i686/i686-pae editions of Clonezilla Live will be no more, from this release on, only amd64 (x86-64) releases will be available; Linux kernel was updated to 6.12.17; the Partclone package has been updated to 0.3.33; the exio package has been updated to 2.0.15; Memtest86+ was updated to 7.20; built with updated and patched live-build 20250225; the live-boot package has been updated to new and patched version 20250225; merged lz4 and lz4mt, use 'lz4 -T0' by default...." Please see the release announcement for a complete changelog.
Garuda Linux 250308
Nico Jensch has announced the release of an updated version of Garuda Linux, a set of Arch-based desktop Linux distributions with a selection popular graphical desktops, including some lesser known ones, such as Sway or Hyprland. The new version, labelled as 250803, introduces Garuda Rani, a graphical settings manager: "We are excited to introduce Garuda Rani, a brand-new application designed to streamline and enhance your Garuda Linux experience. Rani, short for 'Reliable Assistant for Native Installations', is envisioned as the future of Garuda utilities, aiming to eventually replace all existing Garuda applications. Currently, Rani integrates the functionality of our popular Welcome, Gamer and Assistant apps, providing a centralized hub for essential system management and customization tasks." See the release announcement for more information and screenshots.
Garuda Linux 250308 -- Running the Plasma desktop
(full image size: 1.9MB, resolution: 2560x1600 pixels)
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 3,168
- Total data uploaded: 46.7TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Firefox alternatives
Over the past few weeks the Mozilla organization has found itself doing damage control after removing a promise not to sell user information from its FAQ page, adding a licensing clause which forbid the access of adult content, and adding another section granting a license to use material users entered into the browser. While Mozilla has backtracked on some statements, their explanations have usually made the situation less clear and have caused many users to question what Mozilla is doing with their data and to whom it is being sold.
There are many web browsers in the world and we'd like to know which Firefox alternatives, if any, our users are looking at adopting.
You can see the results of our previous poll on switching desktop environments or distributions in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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What Firefox alternative do you like?
| LibreWolf: | 484 (18%) |
| Tor Browser: | 85 (3%) |
| Waterfox: | 130 (5%) |
| Another Firefox derivative: | 198 (7%) |
| A Chromium-based browser: | 445 (16%) |
| A text-based browser: | 14 (1%) |
| Another alternative: | 145 (5%) |
| I am sticking with Firefox: | 1107 (40%) |
| I was not using Firefox anyway: | 133 (5%) |
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| Website News |
New projects added to database
GrapheneOS
GrapheneOS is a privacy and security focused mobile OS for Google's Pixel line of devices with Android app compatibility developed as a non-profit open source project. It's focused on the research and development of privacy and security technology including substantial improvements to sandboxing, exploit mitigations and the permission model. The app sandbox and other security boundaries are fortified. It was founded in 2014 and was formerly known as CopperheadOS.
GrapheneOS -- The home screen
(full image size: 42kB, resolution: 1080x2400 pixels)
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 17 March 2025. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Weekly Archive and Article Search pages. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Next weeks topic idea ... How firefox derrivatives stack against each other? (by AT on 2025-03-10 00:57:42 GMT from Germany)
Since realizing that bad decisions and greed as plagued Mozilla and maybe its time to leave firefox behind, I have been thoroughly testing different firefox forks in the meantime, and I have found some great ones. Librewolf and Waterfox are already popular. I came across Floorp and Zen, both of which are breath of fresh air, And then there is Mercury, which I found the fastest.
Since there are many more, Maybe Distrowatch can move above distros, and compare browsers in the next weekly.
2 • Solus available desktops (by Slappy McGee on 2025-03-10 01:11:04 GMT from United States)
I'm a little surprised that Gnome was a percentage or so AHEAD of XFCE in that little poll query at Mastadon. I would have thought it'd run a close second to Budgie, or be 1st. Perhaps the respondents wanted your impressions of Budgie on that distro as a bit of help in deciding for themselves which to try. I know your remarks helped me shy away from it.
Anyway, I'm glad that distro was reviewed again, as I'm always eager to give indies a try, and I've got it downloading as we speak. Good thorough review (as always), and I'm looking forward to seeing how Solus Plasma does on this Acer Aspire A517.
3 • Budgie Themes (by Guido on 2025-03-10 01:37:38 GMT from Philippines)
The problem is that Budgie uses both GTK 3 and 4 apps. The mixed theme only fits to a certain extent, but this could be changed by using a purely dark one. In Gnome, photo and video apps are always dark, on every distribution. Budgie 11 is supposed to be Qt-based in the future, and then the theme will be less chaotic.
4 • Linux VM on Android, Secure Boot and Firefox (by Vinfall on 2025-03-10 01:43:24 GMT from Hong Kong)
Termux and Termux:X11 exists for a looooong time. The whole point of native support would be bypassing the silly background activity limit Google set (namely PhantomProcessKiller, if you know then you know). If they do not remove it, then it sucks, just like any other Android 12+ device.
In the case of Secure Boot, just don't. It's INSECURE and make the system to NOT BOOT. Every system that attempts to do it, either do it poorly at best (iOS/Android with custom security chip), or worse, open a wide door for attackers (Windows + UEFI and literally every embed device). And you can use Windows 11 w/o UEFI, TPM and Bitlocker perfectly.
Regarding Firefox, it's really not a big deal (in terms of user experience, not spiritual admiration). All you need is a great user.js, custom userChrome.css (userContent.css) and policy-templates. If you find these not enough, add a network filter or outbound firewall. If it's too much work, happy hunting for the next great browser like forever XD (Tor Browser or W3M/Lynx almost works though).
5 • alternate browser (by John on 2025-03-10 01:46:06 GMT from Canada)
A little surprised dillo was not listed. I thought it was rather popular as an alternative. But I guess I was wrong.
6 • Secure Boot (by uz64 on 2025-03-10 02:42:48 GMT from United States)
You're better "fiddling with your BIOS" for a couple minutes to remove all restrictions than leaving it enabled and fiddling with everything for as long as you own your computer trying to get something to work.
7 • Browser (by Friar Tux on 2025-03-10 03:12:13 GMT from Canada)
Funny this poll is coming up now. I'm actually playing with Waterfox as I'm starting to find Firefox is getting a wee bit complicated. Waterfox seems much easier. I tried LibreWolf, but it didn't want to work for me. I don't really like any of the Chrome/Chromium based browsers, though I will use one if there's no other alternative.
8 • favorite browser (by Toran on 2025-03-10 03:34:36 GMT from Belgium)
I have always been a heavy user of Google Chrome and Firefox. Firefox made a few bad decisions this week, and I suppose this great browser will loose informed users.
I try to leave everything of Google, but that is far more difficult due to the simple fact Google is an ecosystem.
Okay, so I hve choosen another alternative which I like really a lot.
My vote goes to ... OPERA. Douze Points!
9 • Solus Project (by BlueIV on 2025-03-10 04:54:31 GMT from United States)
One thing that rubbed me the wrong way about Solus was the way they communicated the dropping of the Mate desktop edition. I don't have a problem with the decision itself but stating that one of the reasons given was that the project was "on life support". While obviously not a large project, that's a cheap shot especially considering 1) Solus itself has been "on life support" at times during its history 2) the replacement, XFCE, isn't much better in that regard (which I don't believe is a real problem for either really). They could have just announced the change without the crotch kick.
10 • Firefox, Chrome and others (by 0323pin on 2025-03-10 05:33:49 GMT from The Netherlands)
The current state regarding web browsers is nothing else than depressing. Everything is a chromium fork or, to a smaller extent, a firefox rebrand. Yes, there's webkitgtk too but seriously, that's another mess.
It would be nice to see real alternatives but, web browsers have become too complex, almost like a full featured OS. When it takes longer to compile the browser then to compile the whole OS were you are running it on, we are in trouble. And this is sadly the point we have reached.
11 • Firefox (by dr.j on 2025-03-10 07:38:58 GMT from Germany)
The problem is not firefox. The problem is the Internet. It is increasingly degenerating into a marketplace where you only see what Google and co. let you see. And if you look at lawnmowers on Amazon, you'll see lawnmower ads on every page you visit for the next three weeks. That's (!) the problem.
So far, I've been using the Tor browser or running my whole system directly behind a Whonix gateway. But that's getting harder and harder. Google doesn't even let you search or you have to click through an armada of captcha. If you use Duckduckgo, it doesn't help much because half of your search results will block you when you go to the site.
12 • A suggestion... (by R. Cain on 2025-03-10 08:17:05 GMT from United States)
Vivaldi.
13 • Dillo (by DaveT on 2025-03-10 08:18:48 GMT from United Kingdom)
@5 Dillo used to be OK and I used it but is sadly out-dated now.
14 • Browsing the Internet (by Felix on 2025-03-10 08:31:47 GMT from Germany)
@11 what do you think about startpage.com? I am using it since a couple years when it was still new. I never use a bare firefox. I always install privacy badger, startpage, duckduckgo and ublock origin as extensions.
15 • Pale Moon (by Rob on 2025-03-10 08:58:42 GMT from Australia)
The Firefox was infected when it let g%gle touch its private parts.
Also, see above.
16 • @11 Predatory Google Ads (by picamanic on 2025-03-10 09:18:36 GMT from United Kingdom)
I NEVER see ads. I suggest that you avoid Google search. I use Duckduckgo, but there are others that also behave responsibly. I do not understand the "blocking" you refer to: can you explain?
17 • SeaMonkey? LQ 2021 poll (by Anon on 2025-03-10 09:37:25 GMT from United States)
Anyone have any opinions on SeaMonkey?
Because of my 4GB ram, it's the web page's (heavy) CONTENT that 'bothers' me!
https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/2021-linuxquestions-org-members-choice-awards-133/browser-of-the-year-4175705713/
https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/17cvjp5/thoughts_on_using_seamonkey_as_a_light_fast_and/
https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=best+linux+browser
https://linuxcommunity.io/t/which-browser-is-best-on-linux/217
Heresy: I like Ai results! (text, not pictures)
Maybe I should use a $1000+ iPhone, rather than $0 Android... naw: I'm a cheapskate ;)
This says Edge uses least memory! https://cloudzy.com/blog/which-browsers-use-the-least-memory/
I remember trying Edge on Linux & it worked fine.
18 • Browsers (by Josh on 2025-03-10 09:43:37 GMT from United States)
I dumped Firefox a while back when amongst a bunch of other WTF decisions they had been making, Mozilla openly admitted that they were selling supposedly 'anonymized' data to advertisers. Looks like I made the right decision.
It has it's flaws, but I've pretty much settled on using Brave. I have also been playing around with Falkon. I tried Librewolf, but it's performance on Youtube wasn't great. And, now they've come out as pushing woke BS. Ugh. Maybe I'll try Mullvad next....
19 • Browsers (by DachshundMan on 2025-03-10 09:53:30 GMT from United Kingdom)
On my Android phone I use the Duckduckgo browser.
On my computer I use Firefox with the Duckduckgo privacy essentials added but the announcement from Mozilla bothered me so I would consider changing if there was a really good replacement. Therefore, I would like to agree with @1, a review of Browsers would be interesting for me.
20 • @12 (by kc1di on 2025-03-10 10:02:20 GMT from United States)
I also like vivaldi just works for me. Fast and quite secure. I have use FF on a regular basis for quite sometime. Have tried all the clones of it but find them lacking in one way or another.
21 • Browser (by eb on 2025-03-10 10:03:10 GMT from France)
Is someone happy with Seamonkey ?
22 • The problem is not... (by z on 2025-03-10 10:29:44 GMT from Italy)
...which alternative to choose; the problem is: what are distro maintainers thinking of doing? Because if I should switch to a different browser and I've no choice but to install that out of official repositories, I might risk of setting up a malware just to avoid being "officially" tracked. That would be a remedy worse than the disease.
23 • @21: (by dragonmouth on 2025-03-10 10:31:56 GMT from United States)
Seamonkey is Firefox with features added.
24 • FIrefox aternative (by Jake on 2025-03-10 10:39:55 GMT from United States)
Well I have experimented with Sea Monkey, Pale Moon (another firefox alternative), Waterfox Classic, Waterfox, and LibreWolf.
Waterfox is my favorite, but I also keep LiberWolf too, which I use when I want an ever higher level of security. I do general browsing with Waterfox for general browsing, but stuff like my IRA, 401K, banking and medical stuff I use LibreWolf. I have webRTC and WebGL shut off on all of them along with all telemetry if it hasn't already been shut down.
25 • Firefox alternative (by Bryan on 2025-03-10 10:53:52 GMT from Germany)
Brave is amazing, the native adblock works amazing and you are not forced into the crypto side of the project.
26 • Browsers (by picamanic on 2025-03-10 11:32:20 GMT from United Kingdom)
Like many here, I have tried most of the Desktop browsers. My Bank only recognises Firefox-proper, but now that I have a computer with more than 4gb, I will migrate to Librewolf for general web browsing. I like the idea of ditching the whole Firefox [and Chromium] mess, but Brave and Palemoon are problematic, and browsers based on newer rendering engines [eg Ladybird] are not ready yet.
27 • Google and Chrome (by RetiredIT on 2025-03-10 12:29:41 GMT from United States)
Don't know if anyone here is up to date on tech news. But it appears that Google's sovereignty and monopoly in the search and browser market is coming to an end. A federal court has ruled that Google will have to break up its business and end some of its illegal practices to force people to only use their products. Final rulings will come in April.
https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-will-still-have-to-break-up-its-business-the-justice-department-said-150000739.html
28 • Browsers (by Hamurabi on 2025-03-10 12:35:45 GMT from United States)
Luakit, Qutebrowser
29 • Solus and bootloaders... (by thatguy on 2025-03-10 12:50:00 GMT from United States)
I liked the review this week more than usual, especially the honest appraisal of Budgie's (and ultimately Solus's) lack of polish/overlapping settings apps. It's one of those distros I try from time to time, never making enough of an impression to stay. For me what stands out is the distro's grub-unfriendliness.
I have many distros installed, all controlled by grub, used by the vast majority of distros and familiar to most. Solus forces the grub user to chainload or use their computer's setup or boot screen to start, which seems unnecessary. Couldn't there at least be the option to use /boot/efi and grub rather than clr and /boot? Maybe that's not even possible (no expert on the ins and outs of bootloaders beyond basic grub fluency), but it would make things easier for multi-booters like me.
What I do is simply copy the Windows chainload bits from the grub.cfg that gets made by os-prober/grub-mkconfig, changing the UUID if necessary and the path to the .efi file needed to boot Solus. It's not that hard, but poorly documented, and something I have to research each time Solus is installed. Being different is cool and all, but sometimes I think Solus does things JUST to be different.I liked Pardus way better, which is where eopkg and comar originated.
30 • Firefox and alts (by kevs (Linux Mint) on 2025-03-10 09:30:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
My usual browsers are Firefox for sites that demand JavaScript and SeaMonkey for sites that don't. SeaMonkey is derived from the old Netscape suite and is much easier to configure than Firefox because it's done via a text menu. I also turn off images in SeaMonkey so I can concentrate on text, and of course to avoid adverts.
I'm also trying out KDE Konqueror, which I'm hoping may return to its former glory. Dillo is good for evading censor blocks if you don't mind basic layouts.
31 • Weekly Rant (by penguinx86 on 2025-03-10 02:51:47 GMT from United States)
I think it's pretty cool that Garuda Linux offers 9 other desktop environments besides Gnome.
Debian on Android? Why not? I already run the Linux Developers Environment on my Chromebook. It's basicaly a Debian Linux terminal window. If ChromeOS can do it, iwhy not Android? The only problem would be no keyboard or mouse with most Android devices.
Firefox? I'm still using it. I like Firefox because it's Mozilla's Revenge against Microsoft. Microsoft used it's anti-competitive muscle to kill the Netwcape Navigator browser in the Brosser Wars of the late 1990's. Firefox is the successor to Netscape Navigator. So I use Forefox to stick it to Microsoft. But if Firefox starts blocking adult content, then I'll probably switch to Duck Duck Go, Chromium or something else.
32 • Ads, browsers (by Slappy McGee on 2025-03-10 13:06:38 GMT from United States)
I use Firefox and see no ads. @11 I don't get it. Honest, not being argumentative or snarky, I just don't get it about "if you look at lawnmowers on Amazon you'll see lawnmower ads for weeks everywhere else" or some such. Huh?
Ublock Origin beckons. 49 million users as of this morning, about 10 million of them with Firefox and the rest with Chrome.
But I'm from Mars, what do I know.
33 • Concerns about LibreWolf (by Cypher on 2025-03-10 14:42:34 GMT from United States)
I have my concerns about LibreWolf as an alternative to Firefox. The dev team has so far refused to identify themselves. Not knowing who they are, what other projects they're involved in, or other affiliations doesn't make it easy for me to trust them in the short or long term.
34 • False sense of security (by Jesse on 2025-03-10 15:08:21 GMT from Canada)
@33: "The dev team has so far refused to identify themselves. Not knowing who they are, what other projects they're involved in, or other affiliations doesn't make it easy for me to trust them in the short or long term."
It doesn't matter who they are since the code is all open source. It can be audited to confirm they haven't done anything improper.
Knowing who they are or who they associate with does nothing to improve the user's security while compromising the developer's security.
Think about it, if you were a dev taking chunks out of giant company's marketshare and working on popular open source software you knew governments wanted to compromise, would you went to dox yourself?
For that matter, shouldn't you, as a user, feel better knowing the open source developers are anonymous and therefore harder to compromise? Having open code and anonymous developers is the best possible scenario because they aren't pressured/vulnerable and we can audit their work.
35 • Budgie is Caught in the Gnome Theme Quagmire (by joncorbly on 2025-03-10 16:15:18 GMT from United States)
Not sure why the Solus theming is so inconsistent. But, Budgie is built on a Gnome foundation and, at least currently, is caught in the Gnome theming quagmire. Current Gnome apps on Budgie ignore local themes entirely, just as they do everywhere.
The panel and menu default to their own theme unless the user locates and disables that option. Even if you do disable that, the panel and menu may not share the same look as the rest of the desktop. Nemo, often used in Budgie because it lacks its own file manager, is a Cinnamon app that expects to see Cinnamon themes.
Materia, or a clone, is the usual default theme. In my experience, Caja's main windows are always black if the theme is Materia. That is fixable with a tool like dconf-editor. Few will know that. Why does Solus ship Caja with Budgie?
36 • Browser options (by aguador on 2025-03-10 16:48:56 GMT from Spain)
I have been using Vivaldi quite heavily in the last couple of years. Until the PaleMoon folks stepped back, Basilisk browser was my goto. I just recently saw that the project has been taken over by a non-PaleMoon dev and I will be taking another look as it offers a good alternative to Google's blink engine.
37 • Firefox (by Gspin on 2025-03-10 17:08:26 GMT from United Kingdom)
Very disappointed with the actions of Firefox. For a long time they have been the only alternative to Chrome based browsers and have respected privacy. While understandable that they need to find additional funds following the Google case, the deliberately vague wording is dishonest. It is quite clear that they are about to sell your data.
Such is the state of the internet these days, but all of the alternatives are based on Chrome or Firefox. While Librewolf, Waterfox etc can try to strip trackers, they will always be reliant on Firefox. If Firefox fails, or stops being open-source, we will have very little choice and no way to protect privacy at all.
38 • Firefox and the thought police (by Kurt on 2025-03-10 17:30:33 GMT from Australia)
So on one hand Mozilla fires Brendan Eich because he holds opinions than aren't sufficiently "progressive", not that was ever any indication that those opinions would affect how end-users were able to use Firefox.
Now Mozilla supposedly "forbids the access of adult content", which while it isn't good for society in general, it's hard to see how this could possibly be enforced without intrusive "Net Nanny" type controls being built into the browser.
39 • Firefox (by pangelico on 2025-03-10 18:10:19 GMT from Brazil)
While I disagree with the direction Firefox is taking, it is currently the only viable option to avoid Google's monopoly. Without Firefox I believe all forks like Librewolf will disappear as well.
40 • Firefox (by Kondratiev on 2025-03-10 18:55:03 GMT from Italy)
Firefox is not perfect, but compared to the competition it remains the only choice.
41 • Firefox no more (by PurpleCow on 2025-03-10 19:20:01 GMT from United States)
To me, Firefox became Internet Explorer. From now on, after I install a new linux distro that comes with firefox by default, I will use Firefox as I used IE in the past: only to download a different browser and never open it again.
Firefox no longer provides the only feature that made it different to chromium browsers, which is privacy (a higher degree of privacy compared to the competitors, to be more precise). Hence, there's no sense to stick to it and deal with the lack of support from many known applications which work on chromium but not on Firefox.
If the company just wants to make money, why don't they just make a FireChromium for the Ads revenue and the data collection, and leave Firefox as a separate project?
Firefox? Not anymore, thanks.
42 • Garuda xfce (by shawnfromnh on 2025-03-10 20:22:09 GMT from United States)
Saw Garuda yesterday when I was here and downloaded the xfce version to see what the new Rani was all about. INstall went great, fast boot and I'm wondering what the big white rectangle is on my desktop. Apparently it's Rani was not installed right or they just put the background and nothing else on the xfce version since there is no Rani or for that matter no package installer besides the packages after you boot into the desktop for the first time choosing from the list they give you to choose from but there hype about Rani and they mess up the package in the installation, huge flub on the person in charge for not making sure by testing it first before allowing the iso to be uploaded to the garuda website.
43 • Solus + Budgie (by JoeD. on 2025-03-10 22:11:33 GMT from United States)
Been using Solus for well over a year. First with Plasma then with Budgie. It has been *for me* a solid distro, runs without issue. During that time the updates have been painless and apps have not been broken.
Switched to Budgie because it seems to be easier on the eyes with extended use. Either of the desktops work well.
My computer use is for the home, some internet, office and media. Been using some distro or another for 25 years. Many, many thanks to Distrowatch.com for all the info I've gleaned over the years!
44 • Trisquel's privacy-focused fork of Firefox, Abrowser (by Andy Prough on 2025-03-11 02:58:45 GMT from United States)
I use the fully libre Trisquel GNU/Linux distro which comes with its own privacy-focused fork of Firefox called Abrowser.
45 • Browsers (by asymmetros on 2025-03-11 08:04:56 GMT from Greece)
Chrome promoted from day 1 specific ideas of how a browser should be. "Simple" and "clear" layout, less customisation options (save from addons), the idea of having as much space possible for web pages to shown. Most browsers, Firefox included, followed these trends.
So I selected Vivaldi. Though Chrome based is less Chrome like than the likes of Firefox.
For me, privacy, customization, embedded functionality is of high importance
46 • LibreWolf (by Sabezan on 2025-03-11 12:10:30 GMT from United States)
@34 the fact that code is open source doesn't afford any security. How long was the malicious code present in OpenSSH? It wasn't found by code review - it was found because someone noticed their processes were a tad big slower.
Knowing who the project lead is does not equate to doxing them. If you're comfortable using software connected with the Kremlin or CCP, that's fine, but I think the vast majority of people would not be.
47 • @46 (by z on 2025-03-11 12:40:39 GMT from Italy)
xz-utils malware was possibile because hackers hid an encrypted, obfuscated module into source code. _That_ was the problem, not the openly viewable code.
48 • Ungoogled Chromium (by Jonathan Vasquez on 2025-03-11 13:30:10 GMT from United States)
I was a long time Firefox users and I've been putting up with their shenanigans for a while since there weren't any other alternatives and I didn't want to go back to a Chromium based browser (to encourage different types of web engines), however after the recent Mozilla stuff, I lost complete confidence in them and I'm fine supporting Chromium based browsers given the situation. Although my privacy is still important and so I've switched to Ungoogled Chromium. I'm also on FreeBSD so my browser options are more limited than on Linux but I'm pretty happy with Ungoogled Chromium.
49 • OpenSSH and xz (by Jesse on 2025-03-11 13:53:35 GMT from Canada)
@46: "The fact that code is open source doesn't afford any security. How long was the malicious code present in OpenSSH? It wasn't found by code review - it was found because someone noticed their processes were a tad big slower."
That was a lot of misinformation in two sentences.
1. There was no malicious code in OpenSSH. The "slow down" issue you're referring to featured malicious code in the xz library, not OpenSSH.
2. One of the reasons it wasn't spotted earlier was no one was auditing the xz code, it was a one-person project. As soon as someone audited the code, they found the issue. (Yes, they started the audit because of a slowdown, but it was when that version of xz was brand new, and the audit was only possible because of xz's open nature.)
3. Because the audit could happen, due to the open source nature, the problem was found quickly and patched before the xz exploit made it into any of the mainstream Linux distributions.
4. Bugs and potential security bugs are found all the time due to code audits. Even if what you were saying were true about xz, that doesn't negate the thousands of fixes which have been executed because of open source audits. Saying "open source doesn't afford any security" is completely false. You could argue open source doesn't make software invulnerable, but open licenses offer a huge improvement in security over closed source code.
50 • Pale Moon as a Firefox partial-alternative (by Pale Moon advocate on 2025-03-11 15:04:40 GMT from Australia)
re. Linux: i use Pale Moon as a partial-alternative to Firefox,
i also use other browsers including Mercury, IceCat, Thorium, Tor Browser, Ungoogled-Chromium, Basilisk, etc. ...
re. Windows: i mean, Edge & Chrome ain't great, but at least they can download Firefox lol ;P
51 • Why is this browser not available to Linux users? (by R. Cain on 2025-03-12 01:10:45 GMT from United States)
This is, for the most part, a Linux-oriented venue.
My guess is that a lot of people here started out using Firefox (and still do) as their web browser because it has, traditionally, offered a lot privacy, tracking protection, and security via its rich offering of privacy and security 'add-ons', both from Firefox and from others.
There COULD be a new contender, But...
**DuckDuckGo has developed a _web browser_ which has gotten very good reviews for its privacy, tracking protection, and its security**. ( https://duckduckgo.com/
Here's the 'blurb' from DDG's (browser) website:
"Protection. Privacy. Peace of mind. Get our browser on all [BUT...see below] your devices.
"Search and browse with the DuckDuckGo browser for more protection. Unlike Chrome and other browsers, we don't track you."
Here's a review from ExpertBeacon:
"DuckDuckGo: The Privacy-First Browser Linux Users Deserve"
https://expertbeacon.com/duckduckgo-the-privacy-first-browser-linux-users-deserve/
("expertbeacon" jumped the gun somewhat. Linux users do indeed deserve it; we just can't get it!)
Here's the question:
Why is this browser not available for Linux?
DDG provides the DDG Browser *ONLY* for Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android.
Any takers on this one?
52 • DDG Browser (by Slappy McGee on 2025-03-12 01:15:31 GMT from United States)
@51 "..any takers on this one?"
Perhaps because Linux has the (false?) reputation of being more secure than those other OSs?
53 • @51 DDG Browser (by Andy Prough on 2025-03-12 04:22:03 GMT from Switzerland)
>"Why is this browser not available for Linux?
DDG provides the DDG Browser *ONLY* for Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android."
Because the GNU/Linux desktop market is smaller than those other markets, and because GNU/Linux desktop users expect for their browser to have a free software license. So it wouldn't make business sense for DDG to make a non-free licensed browser for a smaller market that wouldn't end up using it to any great extent.
Besides, DDG is probably already the #1 or #2 search engine for GNU/Linux users - DDG doesn't stand to make much more money from search by offering GNU/Linux users a proprietary browser.
54 • Browsers (by rhtoras on 2025-03-12 11:20:49 GMT from Greece)
One of the main reason i use Openbsd along nosystemD linux is security... and browsers couldn't be outside the scope of security. Btw openbsd is the only operating system shipped with ungoogled-chromium and Iridium at the same time. And this says it all. Ungoogled Chromium>Libre wolf.
Now i am typing from Void Linux and Frirefox-ESR but this is far from Ideal. I am ready to jump to Iridium or Waterfox sooner or later. Tha main problem is all browsers depend on two engines. BUT and here is the BUT... there comes Ladybird... a new browser based on an Independent engine which is available on UNIX-like systems such as linux. In 2026 we are waiting the first alpha Version of a very promising project. Till then i am happy with iridium, ungoogled chromium, Librewolf and Waterfox and may
(i say maybe) be the Midori browser. Btw midory was nice till i found out zeitgeist dependency on Artix which made me abandon it although i was able to remove this dependency without Issues.
55 • browsers (by grindstone on 2025-03-12 14:51:01 GMT from United States)
Netsurf where ever possible. Ffox if required for compat.
56 • Waterfox. (by Friar Tux on 2025-03-12 18:36:12 GMT from Canada)
OK, I'm back to say Waterfox was a no-go. (See @7). It doesn't seem to want to keep it's configuration. Each time I open it up, it starts as first time opened and asks me to import the bookmarks and such. So back to Firefox as that works best so far.
57 • Alternate browser (by historyb on 2025-03-12 19:35:51 GMT from United States)
I have tried many browsers now I am trying Zen. I remember when FireFox was good
58 • Browser (by Aziv on 2025-03-13 14:04:10 GMT from Italy)
I use only Firefox, Torbrowser if i need, always LibreDNS and DuckDuckGo.
59 • Solus (by Mike on 2025-03-13 15:07:27 GMT from The Netherlands)
I have used Solus for many years, but stopped doing that a couple of monhs ago. Before that, I had had multiple incidents were my computer (Xeon from 1019 with a Nvidia 1050) simply would not boot anymore.Then there were this issues where wayland and my vidcard did not work well together.
I found the Plasma edition to be unmature, giving errors when trying default KDE functionality. Support from the forum was scarce.
Finally I decided to switch to Linux Mint. All my problems have disappeared. I hope Solus finds its way up again, but for now I will stick with Mint.
60 • Solus (by Slappy McGee on 2025-03-13 19:02:48 GMT from United States)
@59 Yes, "I found the Plasma edition to be unmature, giving errors when trying default KDE functionality. Support from the forum was scarce."
As I mentioned in here several days ago after reading the DW review of Solus, I downloaded the ISO and did a full install right away with the Plasma choice.
I was going to go in to the review area and outline the issues... but decided not to unless I saw others who'd had it a while.
I found it inferior to many distros I use (Rocky, MXLinux, Artix), and as you mention, Plasma was just a soldered-on affair with no feel of a true part of the distro as it is in others.
The forums for Solus seem edgy or something; reminded me of PCLinuxOS years ago (haven't used that one for some time now as a result).
61 • FORUM (by rhtoras on 2025-03-14 09:19:04 GMT from Greece)
I see you mainly use nosystemD. A forum which is quite friendly is the one from Devuan. I like Void too but there is no forum and from time to time i see various people, with good or bad attitude.
62 • @61 - Void forum (by Uncle Slacky on 2025-03-14 11:14:31 GMT from France)
Void's forum is its subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/voidlinux/
63 • Void Forum (by rhtoras on 2025-03-14 22:00:08 GMT from Greece)
@62 Yes i know subreddit, irc and telegram group... but all depend to someone else i.e subreddit to Reddit and so on... but you are right Subreddit is a place to find help...
Btw Salix is a quite friendly forum too...
Number of Comments: 63
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| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
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| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
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| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
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| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
| • Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
| • Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
| • Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
| • Issue 1099 (2024-12-02): AnduinOS 1.0.1, measuring RAM usage, SUSE continues rebranding efforts, UBports prepares for next major version, Murena offering non-NFC phone |
| • Issue 1098 (2024-11-25): Linux Lite 7.2, backing up specific folders, Murena and Fairphone partner in fair trade deal, Arch installer gets new text interface, Ubuntu security tool patched |
| • Issue 1097 (2024-11-18): Chimera Linux vs Chimera OS, choosing between AlmaLinux and Debian, Fedora elevates KDE spin to an edition, Fedora previews new installer, KDE testing its own distro, Qubes-style isolation coming to FreeBSD |
| • Issue 1096 (2024-11-11): Bazzite 40, Playtron OS Alpha 1, Tucana Linux 3.1, detecting Screen sessions, Redox imports COSMIC software centre, FreeBSD booting on the PinePhone Pro, LXQt supports Wayland window managers |
| • Issue 1095 (2024-11-04): Fedora 41 Kinoite, transferring applications between computers, openSUSE Tumbleweed receives multiple upgrades, Ubuntu testing compiler optimizations, Mint partners with Framework |
| • Issue 1094 (2024-10-28): DebLight OS 1, backing up crontab, AlmaLinux introduces Litten branch, openSUSE unveils refreshed look, Ubuntu turns 20
| | • Issue 1093 (2024-10-21): Kubuntu 24.10, atomic vs immutable distributions, Debian upgrading Perl packages, UBports adding VoLTE support, Android to gain native GNU/Linux application support |
| • Issue 1092 (2024-10-14): FunOS 24.04.1, a home directory inside a file, work starts of openSUSE Leap 16.0, improvements in Haiku, KDE neon upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1091 (2024-10-07): Redox OS 0.9.0, Unified package management vs universal package formats, Redox begins RISC-V port, Mint polishes interface, Qubes certifies new laptop |
| • Issue 1090 (2024-09-30): Rhino Linux 2024.2, commercial distros with alternative desktops, Valve seeks to improve Wayland performance, HardenedBSD parterns with Protectli, Tails merges with Tor Project, Quantum Leap partners with the FreeBSD Foundation |
| • Issue 1089 (2024-09-23): Expirion 6.0, openKylin 2.0, managing configuration files, the future of Linux development, fixing bugs in Haiku, Slackware packages dracut |
| • Issue 1088 (2024-09-16): PorteuX 1.6, migrating from Windows 10 to which Linux distro, making NetBSD immutable, AlmaLinux offers hardware certification, Mint updates old APT tools |
| • Issue 1087 (2024-09-09): COSMIC desktop, running cron jobs at variable times, UBports highlights new apps, HardenedBSD offers work around for FreeBSD change, Debian considers how to cull old packages, systemd ported to musl |
| • Issue 1086 (2024-09-02): Vanilla OS 2, command line tips for simple tasks, FreeBSD receives investment from STF, openSUSE Tumbleweed update can break network connections, Debian refreshes media |
| • Issue 1085 (2024-08-26): Nobara 40, OpenMandriva 24.07 "ROME", distros which include source code, FreeBSD publishes quarterly report, Microsoft updates breaks Linux in dual-boot environments |
| • Issue 1084 (2024-08-19): Liya 2.0, dual boot with encryption, Haiku introduces performance improvements, Gentoo dropping IA-64, Redcore merges major upgrade |
| • Issue 1083 (2024-08-12): TrueNAS 24.04.2 "SCALE", Linux distros for smartphones, Redox OS introduces web server, PipeWire exposes battery drain on Linux, Canonical updates kernel version policy |
| • Issue 1082 (2024-08-05): Linux Mint 22, taking snapshots of UFS on FreeBSD, openSUSE updates Tumbleweed and Aeon, Debian creates Tiny QA Tasks, Manjaro testing immutable images |
| • Issue 1081 (2024-07-29): SysLinuxOS 12.4, OpenBSD gain hardware acceleration, Slackware changes kernel naming, Mint publishes upgrade instructions |
| • Issue 1080 (2024-07-22): Running GNU/Linux on Android with Andronix, protecting network services, Solus dropping AppArmor and Snap, openSUSE Aeon Desktop gaining full disk encryption, SUSE asks openSUSE to change its branding |
| • Issue 1079 (2024-07-15): Ubuntu Core 24, hiding files on Linux, Fedora dropping X11 packages on Workstation, Red Hat phasing out GRUB, new OpenSSH vulnerability, FreeBSD speeds up release cycle, UBports testing new first-run wizard |
| • Issue 1078 (2024-07-08): Changing init software, server machines running desktop environments, OpenSSH vulnerability patched, Peppermint launches new edition, HardenedBSD updates ports |
| • Issue 1077 (2024-07-01): The Unity and Lomiri interfaces, different distros for different tasks, Ubuntu plans to run Wayland on NVIDIA cards, openSUSE updates Leap Micro, Debian releases refreshed media, UBports gaining contact synchronisation, FreeDOS celebrates its 30th anniversary |
| • Issue 1076 (2024-06-24): openSUSE 15.6, what makes Linux unique, SUSE Liberty Linux to support CentOS Linux 7, SLE receives 19 years of support, openSUSE testing Leap Micro edition |
| • Issue 1075 (2024-06-17): Redox OS, X11 and Wayland on the BSDs, AlmaLinux releases Pi build, Canonical announces RISC-V laptop with Ubuntu, key changes in systemd |
| • Issue 1074 (2024-06-10): Endless OS 6.0.0, distros with init diversity, Mint to filter unverified Flatpaks, Debian adds systemd-boot options, Redox adopts COSMIC desktop, OpenSSH gains new security features |
| • Issue 1073 (2024-06-03): LXQt 2.0.0, an overview of Linux desktop environments, Canonical partners with Milk-V, openSUSE introduces new features in Aeon Desktop, Fedora mirrors see rise in traffic, Wayland adds OpenBSD support |
| • Issue 1072 (2024-05-27): Manjaro 24.0, comparing init software, OpenBSD ports Plasma 6, Arch community debates mirror requirements, ThinOS to upgrade its FreeBSD core |
| • Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
| • Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
| • Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
| • Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
| • Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
| • Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
| • Full list of all issues |
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FreedomBox
FreedomBox is a Debian-based distribution, primarily used as a server operating system for home users. FreedomBox supports point-and-click settings up a number of services ranging from a calendar or jabber server to a wiki or VPN through a web interface. Firewall, domain names, user accounts, backups, and Btrfs snapshots can also be managed through a simple web-based control centre.
Status: Active
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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