 Hey everybody, welcome back to the channel today. I'm going to be taking a look at solis 4.2 Which was just recently released now. I have not used solis since Literally the first day I switched to Linux full-time Linux or solis budgie was my first Linux distribution that I used After switching away from Windows and that was four years ago and I highly enjoyed it but Because of the the repository limitations that it had I moved on to something that was more popular and I haven't used it since When I use solis there wasn't even a KDE plasma version I mean and so it's been a long time step uses now today I'm going to be looking at the plasma version because I'm very interested in what this is like and We'll take a look at some of the new things obviously, but I'll also take a look and see if some of those repository Repository limitations that it had before are still there or whether or not they've gotten better. So let's jump into This is the live CD here or the live ISO and Cool wallpaper. I mean, it's not I mean, it's definitely not traditional. I mean, it's just a cool picture which is I mean usually in a Distribution you get a wallpaper with a logo on it or something. I mean, this is you know, it's pretty So I will just say this that I'm using this in a virtual machine. So Performance issues will probably be a little bit wonky It's just something we're going to deal with because I don't have a capture card so I can I can't install this on Metal and actually show you what it looks like that took a long time for the menu to actually activate those and that's unusual Even in a virtual machine, we'll go ahead and Install this And this looks like a I mean, this looks a lot like calamaries But I don't think it is Usually there's like a little Question mark up here. Anyways, I guess it doesn't really matter. Well, uh You can find my location. See if you do it correctly US yep Make sure this is working test and You did not find my Location very well, but it's a virtual machine. So it's probably wonky Next automatically partition sure What are you gonna are you gonna use um EXT4 I wonder No, don't need to encrypt Type the hostname We'll call this solas VM Install bootloader. Yep Okay, use your name drmdub Oops good password add now Yeah, this is not calamaries. This is custom because this doesn't look anything It's just looks a little bit similar to calamaries, but it's definitely not that unless they've completely customized it If anybody in the comment knows what Installer this is if this or if this is custom, let me know in the comments All right, let's see here MS-DOS partition. I'm interesting to see what um It does not tell you what it's going to Partition your drives as I was interested. I wonder if they're gonna use EXT4 because if this ends up being butterfs I'm probably gonna have a problem because butterfs does not do well in a virtual machine is at least as far as I can tell Okay, we're gonna see if it installs And I'll take a note of the Interestingly enough it did not set the clock clock correctly. It's only 640 and it says 1140 That is fascinating We'll see how long this takes. Okay, that only took about a minute. Honestly. That was all it was and Now we're restarting and we'll see if it logs me into the actual system or if it actually logs me into the back to the live CD May end up having to close this down and Reboot into the actual system after ejecting the live CD, but we'll see. Yeah, we're back in the live CD. Okay So we're gonna have to shut this down this way Okay And let's see your storage and we'll Remove from drive. Okay. All right Now we can start back up start back up again. All righty See what boot times look like That was really quick That was really quick then stall was really quick. I was really impressed with that. Now. Let's go ahead and log in and see how With plasma you always know a system slow When it you go from the login screen to the desktop because sometimes that can take quite a bit So let's see how how quick this is That was impressive, I mean seriously impressive that reminds me a lot of what MX Linux was like This is very good. Yeah All right So let's take a look around the system first and see what is Available because you remember it's been four years since I've used Solace So I don't even remember what the package manager even looks like or how to use it So we may have to do is a little bit of research That's always good for a video. You're supposed to know what you're doing, but This is much more responsive. Oh good awesome. All right. So starting with development There's a user feedback console. It's I'm assuming is probably like a bug reporter graphics Gwenview Leroy office draw an ocular Internet Firefox Katie connects installed all Thunderbird is here Multimedia Eliza is gonna be a music player. I believe Let's open that up. I think I think that's what that is Music player I believe that's what's gonna be I believe it lies as the new KDE music player that's gonna be Replacing the one that's stuck on could be completely wrong about that. I feel like I've read that before MPV is here SM player What is SM player SM player is gonna be your mute your movie player, okay? Really would prefer VLC VLC just makes more sense than something like that, but whatever Libre offices here And not a lot of settings system settings here This is just gonna be the regular KDE settings thing and the global theme is set to soulless dark, which is a Custom theme because this is not breeze. This is a different color than breeze dark. That's cool. That's good Nothing crazy, of course, it's just dark and blue, you know dark color and blue Let's see Nothing hugely out of the ordinary not a large installation at all no crazy apps even the You know KDE apps are kind of minimal here It did get the clock right. I just noticed that so let's uh, let's see here. Let's about Let's look at the about system information. So we're using KDE plasma version 5.20, which is the current version Katie it doesn't apparently Katie doesn't show the Katie apps version in This anymore, maybe they called the frameworks version. I'm not sure I can't actually remember this is using kernel 5.10.2 Which is the most current version. I believe It's definitely close And we've opened up a few things here, let's uh, let's do all shift T and see if we get a terminal which we do Nice, let's uh, make this full screen and zoom in a whole bunch. Let's see if new fetch is installed. Nope all right, let's uh See if Freed dash and I believe is the command. Yep It's using 509 megabytes, which is spectacular after I've opened up some things I mean, I wonder what it was blank because 509 for plasmids like really good Let's see if we can look if H top is installed. Nope. How about top top is here So we got 141 tasks and let's see It's been a long so long since I've used Top I'm so used to H top with colors. Yeah, I'm not sure where it's just threads We're just gonna isolate this is a good opportunity To figure out how to use their package manager because I don't remember how to use package manager solis package manager Let's see. Let's see what the documentation for solis looks like basics of package management You can install one or more package by using sudo sudo EO package install. So that's basically the same Type type of syntax is like apt. So let's uh Let's quit this And we'll clear out of this and we'll do sudo sudo EOP KG install neo fetch Yes, let's resize this just a bit. That was really fat really fast. Let's see if it actually worked Yep, cool Yeah, so neo fetches in their repositories. Let's see what What I wanted to try and see just a random Program that I use all the time is called NC spot. It's a terminal thing to listen to Spotify. Let's see if it's in their repository sudo EOP KG Install and see spot nope That's disappointing So what about? Spotify, okay, so did I actually go through and Type that incorrectly EOP EOP KG Yeah, all right, so Spotify isn't there either This is the same problem. I had when I used to four years ago this thought their repositories aren't good now let's see if there's a a Graphical package manager here. Maybe maybe discoveries here. Maybe somewhere Software Center, okay, so this is This is not discovery So close this here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, go away All right We can minimize that Let's see here gaming on Solace. So there's Let's see if Where's like a search is steam here steam is is available. Okay, what about Spotify? Okay, so Spotify is not available in the regular repositories. You have to go to this third party thing in order to install so much So the chromes here Incincus here ocean audio Plex media server Pie charm if you want to actually use it Skype Spotify, okay, so Let's just install this and see how it long it takes because if I remember right this takes Forever to actually install this may take some time. Maybe even tells you could not reach destination file complete fail Okay, and that one even close Interesting bugs we have bugs fascinating, okay Yeah, this is still a problem so I Like distributions that go through and say hey, you want on we're gonna do something different We're not gonna base ourselves on a boon to we're not gonna base ourselves on arch We're not gonna base ourselves on Debian. We're Debian We're gonna create our own thing and that's what Solace has done the downside of that as you Come up with these kind of problems. I mean the bugs the south I mean this could have something to do with being in a virtual machine. It's a hundred percent possible That's the case But the repository thing is something that is just has not been solved for whatever reason They're very resistant to putting third-party applications like even even third-party applications that are open source You know they Not putting any of those in their repositories at all That means you can't solve them via command line You can't update them probably via the command line. You probably have to focus and do that doing that from this software center so if you want to use The Linux like I use it which is primarily from the command line. It doesn't seem like I'm assuming that there's actually a way if See this is actually completely frozen. Well, we did get this open up here. Okay And you open up twice because wow Open up a 4545 times. All right. We need to figure out how to I keep hitting control enter for so let's see how to uninstall Actually, it's pseudo EO package PKG install H top That at least H top is in their repositories so H top oops Let's see here the Software search for software is not there What do you what do you call this? software center, but It's not finding anything called software Interesting my guess is that the slowness of this is actually because of this being in a virtual machine And I'm actually I'm just scrolling right through this All my processes here because I'm trying to find software center So I can actually force quit it. I Could do just I could just quit this and do Kill Oops, I gotta know the so let's first do this exprop Find out what the hell the name is this is named solis dash sc That's an intuitive. So kill all Solis SC there we go All right, well, let's see if the response enough Responsiveness of the system comes back after software center decided to completely crash It seems to Open that back up again console Yeah, that was it seems it seems to be back good all right so Like I was talking about I Admire the Gumpion and the courage it takes to come out and create something new that's not based on another distro. It's just the the Interesting decisions that they make not to have a very well-stocked repository That it would keep me from using it as a daily driver now from a plasma perspective. I was really impressed with the startup times Even in a virtual machine. I mean I have If you plasma starts really good in a virtual machine, you've done things right But mostly this is just stock plasma, which is good. There's nothing wrong with stock plasma being what they present I'm impressed at it. I'm I'm impressed and glad and that this is up to date because Solis isn't I Think you get about one update a year one major update a year, but that maybe I'm not quite entirely sure about that for sure It's not a rolling release as far as I know So whether or not you it when 5.21 comes out for plasma whether or not you'd get that right away. I'm not sure Maybe you would Let's go ahead and look at the software center again. See if this thing will crash one more time Let's see if we can just install something different I wonder if okay, so there's I use bit warden as my password manager, let's see if it's in Nope, no bit warden here and there's no bit warden here. So what would happen? Well? The question all right, so let's go see if Here I'm interested in seeing if Because I think bitworn has a app image Yep So I'm just curious to see if solis ones will work with app images. Oh That was fantastic. That was very good. So App images support app image support and solis is fantastic That will save quite a bit of quite a lot of hassle with that Kind of mediocre repository thing that they've got going on. So bitworn is there. I'm interested to see out of the box snap install mail spring I Just happen to know that that's a snap Snap out of the box too. I wonder flat pack I I don't know enough about flat back in order to actually go through and try to install something But I'm assuming it probably is We'll see I'm actually gonna find out. Let's go to flat hub. We'll install something here So like there's a there's a flat pack of spotify Wait until this is done Snaps are notoriously take long to pretty fairly long to install It's almost like they're building from source. I'm also curious. Let's go home here And somehow solis has managed to make it so that the snap Actually, let's close this and make sure Yeah, there's no snap folder in your home directory You want to know So let's right there You've gotten a win because if you install snapd on like an arch you get a snap snap folder in your home directory And it cannot go away. I think the same as Same the same with a boom too Anyways, let's go to downloads here. Hold on. So I wanted to try it single click single click to enter into a folder when Flat pack no All right, so flat pack support is at least clicked install flat pack is not It's not supported. Let's see if it will do it from the terminal No Flat pack is not Installed out of the box. So they support snaps they support app images, but not flat pack, which you know, it's a choice Not the choice I would probably you know choose but then I'm an arch guy. We pronounce it the AUR. That's just the way things are Anyway, so I Will say this with the way they supported app images that app image installation was just out of the war Out of this world great because a lot of times every Linux distribution will support app images It's just a lot of times They'll just open it up and then you'll have to go into your downloads folder and double-click that icon every single time You want to run the program because it won't actually move the dot desktop file into your your path or whatever This actually it said I'm installing this now if I wanted to go through and here in the menu and search for bit Warden, of course, it's very slow Come on now This has to be from virtual machine problem. I don't I don't think if you install this in mental metal you'll have the same issues I spoke too soon apparently bit warden is not showing up In the application menu Maybe after restart it would that's a little bit disappointing Because I was I was gonna I was all for being gung-ho and praising their supportive app images But it ends up in the application menu so that means that if I wanted to actually install the dance if I actually wanted to go through and Open it up again. I'd have to double-click that icon. That's annoying That's annoying That's not a soulless problem. That's something that happens with app images Very rarely will you find a distribution that will actually go through and install the thing like it's actually installing it That's why snap is actually so good because like we get mail spring here Yeah mail spring is showed up in the The menu just fine. Okay, so That is just a brief look Almost a half an hour look actually I was just a brief look at soulless 4.2 I didn't go through the new things because Going over new things when you haven't used it for four years doesn't make a lot of sense So if you've used it before You'll have to look I will link in the show notes below to the change log or whatever So if you've used it before maybe you can just go through that and see what's new but From a new user's perspective, I've kind of gone through and look and look to see how soulless is doing So just in conclusion my thoughts on it I admire it, but I probably wouldn't use it. That's that's where I'm at right now For multiple reasons the biggest one is that I enjoy installing software from repositories And like Ubuntu has a huge repository You'd never have to touch snap if you don't want to you can just install stuff through sudo apt install And there's a whole bunch of stuff there Obviously arch has there you are Fedora has a huge repository and a whole bunch of other repositories that you can add Like if you wanted to install the nvidia drivers I gotta even get a chance to go through and try that on this because I mean using a virtual machine But I mean, I'm not sure how the nvidia driver solution would work on in in soulless because Is it in the repositories? Are you gonna have to build these things from scratch? I mean, it's just it's kind of you know crazy So like I said, I admire it, but I wouldn't use it because of that repository problem And even with the app image support Which apparently isn't as good as I'd hoped it would be but I mean it's there at least and snap is there So you could use snap so That adding those on top kind of take care of the repository problems, but I don't want to use three different package managers basically to You know Get all my programs installed. I want to use one That's and and even if you limited yourself to the graphic file the graphic software center That's really two things too because it has their own repositories And then you had to click on the third party link and as we saw Now whether or not that that uh failure to install Spotify from the software center was a virtual machine problem I don't know But you know, it's a thing. So it's just a thing. So I would I would um Man, I mean it I like I said I admire them, but I wouldn't use this then now In the comments below, let me know if you've ever used soulless before if you're using the most recent soulless Let me know if you like it. Maybe there's something that I'm missing because a lot of people when I Reviewed mx links pointed out things that I didn't cover because I'd never used it before and that's really great I love having a conversation in the comments and make sure you leave one If you'd like to support the channel, you can do so in many number of ways leave the video a thumbs up Hit the subscribe button hit the notification icon button You can also support us on patreon at patreon.com slash the linux cast I did go through and redo the tier so you can now just support us for a dollar So That's cool. I'd like your dollar. I take a dollar. Anyways, thanks for watching. I'll see you next time