Solus 4.1 was released in January. Here is the release announcement.
I have experimented with Solus since release 1.0 in 2015. I like the simple elegance of its desktop. On the other hand, I would never choose Solus as my main desktop, because it does not seem oriented toward traditional unix/linux users.
I have kept a running copy of Solus around, since 2015. Up until now, I have used the Budgie desktop. But what’s new with the latest release, is that they now provide a Plasma desktop. As a use of KDE Plasma, I just had to give that a try.
Installing
I downloaded from the torrent (using “ktorrent” as a client). The download was pretty fast. I have since installed several times, testing different things each time. Generally, the installs went pretty well.
My first install was to a new KVM virtual machine, configured for MBR booting. I told the installer to encrypt the system. The installer setup an unencrypted “/boot” partition, and an encrypted LVM for root file system and for swap. It setup “/home” to be part of the root file system. So everything is encrypted, except “/boot” (which contains the kernel). For this install, the installer use grub2 as a bootloader. I was prompted for an encryption key during boot.
My second and third installs were to an existing KVM virtual machine using UEFI booting. This time, I did not use encryption. I was able to select existing partitions for root, “/home”. It did not allow me to specify a swap partition or the EFI partition, but it used the partitions that it already found. It did not reformat swap, so the existing UUID for swap continued to be valid after the install. With UEFI booting, Solus uses “sytemd-boot”. I’ll comment more on that below with a section on booting.
My final install was to a USB drive, where I already have openSUSE installed in an encrypted LVM. I installed Solus to a separate unencrypted partition. I could not find a way of telling the installer to use the existing LVM volume for swap. But I was able to set that up after the install. This USB is normally using MBR booting from my laptop. But I did not want Solus to mess with the existing booting, so I told it to skip installing a bootloader. After the install, I booted into openSUSE Leap 15.1, and updated the boot loader there. I could then use that bootloader to boot into Solus 4.1.
Once in Solus (for that USB install), I created “/etc/crypttab”. I then rebooted, and was prompted for the encryption key. So I then added an entry to “/etc/fstab” for the swap volume (in that encrypted LVM). And I added an entry to mount my home volume at “/xhome”. Rebooting again, I checked that these were properly being used. And, finally, I added some symbolic links from my home directory to the encrypted volume mounted at “/xhome”.
As a final step, again for the USB install, I ran (as root) the command
grub-install --force /dev/sda8
to install a bootloader to the root partition. The Solus installer wants to boot from the MBR, which would interfere with booting other systems on that drive. I then changed the bootloader entry in openSUSE, to use a “configfile” command to boot Solus using the boot menu that Solus provides. That way, on kernel updates for Solus, I will get the new kernel without having to first update openSUSE.
The software
Solus Plasma mostly looks like other plasma installs. The desktop is very nice in appearance, with an elegant default wallpaper. As has been my previous experience with Solus, I did have to install some software that I consider important. In particular, I installed “vim”, “diffutils” and “openssh”. I also installed “tcsh” and switched to that as my default shell. I expect that I will eventually run into other software that I need but is not part of a standard Solus install. I’ll note, however, that “cryptsetup” and “lvm2” were both already there, so I did not need to install those.
I also installed “yakuake” (the Plasma drop down terminal) which I have come to find useful.
For the most part, however, the Plasma desktop software was working pretty well and to my expectations. The installed version is Plasma 5.17.5. Since that install, the KDE people have released Plasma 5.16. I do not know if or when Solus will upgrade to that version.
Booting
When used with MBR style booting, Solus does fine. But, in my opinion, the way it boots for UEFI systems has problems. Solus uses SystemD boot for this. And you might say that I am not a fan.
At present SystemD Boot also supports booting on MBR (non-UEFI) systems. I do not know of any distros using that. Solus only uses SystemD boot for UEFI systems.
As background, note that I already had a KVM virtual machine with UEFI booting, where I was dual booting KaOS and Solus (Budgie desktop). Both use SystemD booting. And that combination worked.
My first test was to clone this virtual machine, so that I could test the clone. On that cloned system, I replaced KaOS with Solus. That would leave a virtual machine with two different Solus versions (Budgie and Plasma). The install itself went fine. But, when I was finished, I could only boot Solus Plasma. There was no option to boot Solus Budgie. The boot files in the EFI partition for Solus Plasma had overwritten the boot files for Solus Budgie.
The documentation from the SystemD maintainers says that one of the strong points of SystemD boot is its support of dual boot. But apparently it cannot dual boot between Solus Budgie and Solus Plasma. Similarly, it probably cannot boot two different setups of KaOS, and for the same reason — the boot files for the two KaOS systems would conflict.
I’ll note that there would be no problem using grub with two Solus systems or with two KaOS systems.
For my second UEFI install, I used the original KVM virtual machine (before cloning). And this time, I installed Solus Plasma to replace Solus Budgie. That worked without any problem. So, using SystemD boot it is possible to dual boot Solus and KaOS. But it is not possible to dual boot two Solus system nor to dual boot two KaOS systems.
Summary
Solus Plasma is a pretty nice implementation of KDE Plasma. While I won’t be using that as my main desktop, I do expect to keep an installed version around for occasional testing.
