Solus OS

For the seasoned users among you, chances are you may have previously heard about the development of the Solus operating system – for both good and bad reasons. For those less aware of the behind-the-scenes antics, you might want to check out our full interview with its founder, Ikey Doherty, back in LU&D 162.

Following on from a successful launch, the project looks to offer a stable, and alternative, take on the more common GNOME-based distributions. Without doubt, Solus’ most distinguishing feature is its unique graphical interface: Budgie. The Budgie desktop has been written from the ground up, enabling easy integration into other distros and is essentially an open source project in its own right.

At its core is its simplicity, which is something that Solus heavily relies on, and it pays dividends when moving around the interface. A large part of this is the Raven applet technology that provides an intuitive notification centre for desktop users, which is still fairly uncommon for most modern distros to contain. It’s also highly accessible out-of-the-box, not only due to the amount of key software readily available, but also the use of ‘high contrast’ theming to make it the distro of choice for those with visual impairments.

Solus OS has just launched its first point release (1.1 Shannon) and with that, it has optimised, refined and tweaked Budgie to be better than ever before. For those who are after a traditional desktop experience, but don’t want to compromise on how their interface looks, then you really need to download Solus as soon as possible. Official downloads can be found over at solus-project.com.

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