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Solus Linux is Not Well
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Apparition_B5 Oct 28, 2018
I wouldn't say that Solus Linux is dead, but it is definitely not well. The distribution's original domain name of solus-project.com is gone, now replaced by getsol.us. As to why, well, it's a long read or listen to (available both in audio and text), but here you go.

To sum up: Solus 4 was originally due November 2017. That didn't happen. Ikey, the main and only full time Solus developer, began focusing on improving himself and withdrawing from the Late Night Linux podcast and social media. In July, he moved back to England. In late July, Ikey deleted the remainder of his social media presence and mostly vanished.

In late August, Solus suffered a major Internet outage. Unfortunately, the only person's name on the OVH hosting account is Ikey. The other core Solus Linux team members had/have no access. After five hours, Ikey came out of hiding and said that the OVH servers suffered hard freezes. Everything was back up again, but Ikey disappeared again.

In early September, Solus suffered a second major Internet outage. It turned out that Ikey stopped making payments to OVH. The other core team members opened up a new domain name and web site, getsol.us, and spread word on social media to people. On September 7th, Ikey made contact with the other core team members and said that he paid OVH for another thirty days, but that he was "very very sick." That was the last time anyone has heard from Ikey. I personally had no idea about any of this because the only social media I use is MeWe.

In mid-September, the entire Solus Linux project was moved over to the getsol.us domain name and new servers, and a new Solus Linux version 3.9999 was released.

Unfortunately, the two remaining core Solus Linux developers have no access to the original solus-project.com domain name, the G Suite e-mail service, nor the Patreon and PayPal accounts which are both in Ikey's name only.

Yesterday, the call went out by the remaining core Solus Linux developers asking people to cease donating to the Solus Linux Patreon. I've personally been donating $$ per month to it for a year now. It turns out they have no access to it and have no idea what the state of funding is. Posts went up on the Solus Linux Patreon page's community section yesterday telling people to pull their pledges.

So with Solus Linux's main developer gone without a trace, it certainly doesn't look good for what was my favorite Linux distribution. I am not sure what to do now. The obvious choice is Ubuntu MATE since I've been using MATE, but I do not care for Ubuntu for various reasons.
lucinos Oct 29, 2018
This is bad news :(

It reminds me the discussions for about every project with a benevolent dictator, "what happens if he get hit by a bus". Apparently there is not always a plan about that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor

Quoting: Apparition_B5I am not sure what to do now.

Have you tried Manjaro? Also KDE is in a VERY good shape nowadays, so I could not recommend enough Manjaro KDE to at least try.

Xpander Oct 29, 2018
This is sad news. But that can happen with smaller distro's with not enough fulltime developers.

I'd recommend Arch or Antergos over Manjaro though as Manjaro has weird package holdups and their own repositories, which can sometimes conflict with the AUR when Manjaro holds packaged from updating and also with nvidia GPU drivers from AUR theres issues with Manjaro as they have their own weird thingy to install them. But other than that Manjaro should be solid experience also.
Liam Dawe Oct 29, 2018
This is why I tend to steer clear of such small distributions. They can end up doing some interesting stuff, but they can so easily have such major issues.
lucinos Oct 29, 2018
Quoting: XpanderI'd recommend Arch or Antergos over Manjaro though as Manjaro has weird package holdups and their own repositories, which can sometimes conflict with the AUR when Manjaro holds packaged from updating and also with nvidia GPU drivers from AUR theres issues with Manjaro as they have their own weird thingy to install them. But other than that Manjaro should be solid experience also.

I am using both Manjaro and Arch. Antergos did not went well when I tried. I would say unless you are doing something really weird there is no conflict with the AUR and in some cases Manjaro may be even better than Arch at it as it may support a few things as a distro. The thing about nvidia I would say they are different, I would not say better or worse, I would say try and see.

My actual biggest fear about Manjaro was the bus factor but that was a few years ago. Manjaro is doing great. I have not tried Solus but for what I know manjaro would be the closest to that experience I think. I am not recommending it just as a good distro but even more as something that may be close in principles with Solus.
14 Oct 30, 2018
The news about Solus is a big bummer. I hope that Ikey person is alive and well.

If you are not much a fan of Ubuntu-based stuff, I also highly recommend an Arch-based one. My main rig has been Arch for several years now and I've never reinstalled, even though I've rebuilt the computer. My laptop has been running Antergos for over a year. I have three other towers that are running Manjaro. (That's a recent change. Two of them were previously Elementary OS and the other was Antergos.)

If you're at a point where you think you want an Arch-based system but are not sure which to choose, here's what I say:
-Choose Arch if you value the experience of building it yourself and having many choices along the way. It makes the system feel like it's yours. Your own. Your precious.
-If running pure Arch makes you feel good but you'd rather get on with it, go with Antergos.
-Choose Manjaro if you want a more refined delivery of the operating system -- from installation, to system preferences, to updates -- it's a better user experience for the regular guy. Oh, does "regular guy" offend you? Then, I guess you should start your Arch installation plan. :)
qptain Nemo Nov 1, 2018
This is heartbreaking, I tried Solus in a VM a while ago and really loved it, I was going to actually start recommending it as the first option to all Linux newcomers. I really hope the project recovers, they really had something going there with actual user-friendliness and sane defaults and all that jazz. And I hope the main maintainer gets well too.

Quoting: 14My main rig has been Arch for several years now and I've never reinstalled, even though I've rebuilt the computer.
Haha my main arch install was also made 1 computer ago and 2 hard drives ago.
Przmk Nov 1, 2018
It doesn't seem bad. In fact, what they tried to explain in their recent blog post is that everything is now under control.

When it comes to donations through Patreon, they put a heads-up today stating that they now have access to the funds. https://www.reddit.com/r/SolusProject/comments/9t3xqx/update_on_patreon_followup_soon
Przmk Nov 1, 2018
Quoting: GuestWell, as an actual user of Solus I must say that Solus is alive and kicking. Sure, there were some problems with domain names and organisations, but now after several migration processes all of these are resolved. FWIW, all these troubles didn't distract the devs from updating and improving the distro - updates for the applied software and big software stacks were landing as usual. And everyone could see it if they just opened the dev tracker... Or ran distro update.
At the moment Solus team consists of 3 core devs and 2 global maintainers, who continue work on the distribution as usual. Plus about 15-25 regular contributors (I am one of them, actually) who submit new updates and completely new software in the repo.
So, Soifed, please stop spreading this misinformation. Ikey's disappearance affected Solus' infrastructure, but the distro itself is really far from being "not well".

I didn't say it was not well or that it did not affect the infrastructure. I think you're mistaking me for OP.
qptain Nemo Nov 1, 2018
I'm really glad to hear that it's still afloat and on the table.
14 Nov 5, 2018
I saw this article just today and thought it would be good to post here. Open letter from Ikey Doherty:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Solus-Open-Letter
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