The Solus Project Review

Is an independent Linux distribution which targets desktop PC users. The project started in 2011 carrying the name “SolusOS” but later was changed to a plain “Solus”. What mainly makes Solus different is its desktop interface called “Budgie” beside a lot of other software like “eopkg” which is the distribution’s package manager.Solus uses a rolling release model.

The Solus Project kind of feels like No Man’s Sky without starships. The survival aspect is more robust and requires full attention to different health systems. The game could use a bit more polish in places, like better inventory management, more worthwhile exploration and more interesting caves. Sep 27, 2017  The Solus Project review The idea of being dropped into an unfamiliar environment while using only our wits and resourcefulness to survive is a notion that.

Providing an updated ISO file of the distribution every few months containing the latest software and updates. This, however, doesn’t mean that the system is “unstable” like some other rolling Linux distributions.There are a lot of exciting things when it comes to Solus. Its desktop interface “” is completely developed from scratch but is compatible with some GNOME technologies.

It also has its own package manager called “eopkg” which uses.eopkg format for package files (it doesn’t depend on.deb or.rpm files nor can install them). “eopkg” was forked from Pardus Linux.

Can your life be salvaged, or are we always sometimes monsters?ChoiceA story-driven experience focusing on relationships and emotional bonds rather than traditional RPG combat and adventuring. Always sometimes monsters free download. The story from there is up to you.

But developers of Solus have plans to replace it with ““.Solus also has its own software center. It allows you to search / install / update any package or program you want. It also provides a one-click-install option for some 3rd-party applications (Like Chrome, Flash, Skype.).The latest snapshot is numbered by its release date, Solus 2017.01.01. We downloaded the new ISO and played with it for a while and this was our experience so far. TL;DR: It’s good and fast.

Because of its own packaging system, you may have to wait for a while for some software to be in the repositories. But it provides most important packages and libraries to end users. Solus 2017.01.01 ReviewThis version was released around 45 days ago. It’s considered to be the latest stable release. We chose to go with the Budgie desktop over MATE because it’s the “flagship” in Solus. This is the default desktop: Solus 2017.01.01 DesktopWe immediately started the installation process.

The installer is insanely fast and smooth. The whole booting & installation process took 3 minutes with us (on a SSD drive). This is how the installer works:After the installation you can continue exploring from the live system or you can choose to reboot.Again, we’ll meet the Budgie desktop. It’s really simple and clean. You only see the panel on top containing launchers and the system tray. And your wallpaper taking the rest of the screen. Desktop icons are disabled by default on Budgie (but can be enabled from settings).

Just like GNOME Shell.You can click on the top right icon in the panel to launch “Raven”. Which is a customization center built for the Budgie desktop. It allows to you adjust settings, manage notifications, check applets or customize the user interface:By default, the distribution comes with Firefox, VLC, Transmission, Thunderbird, Nautilus, Gedit, Rythombox, HexChat and some other small utilities for managing the system. That’s not bad for an out-of-the-box experience.

However, no office suite is installed (even LibreOffice). So the user will have to download some additional software after the installation according to his needs.This is Solus Software Center. It has very good user interface and provides a lot of functionality: Solus Software CenterThis is the single category page:And this is how an application page looks like, adding some screenshots to this page definitely would be better:You can install some 3rd-party applications easily from the following tab with a single click:You can also search for applications or packages:This is eopkg, the default package manager for Solus. It depends on the.eopkg binary format:The commands are very similar to dnf or apt.

You can install a package using: sudo eopkg install packageOr to remove it: sudo eopkg remove packageTo run a system-wide upgrade: sudo eopkg upgradeeopkg won’t be able to read or install.deb or.rpm files. Which is a big limitation if the package your are looking for doesn’t exist in the official repositories for Solus. Of course you can build it yourself or ask the developers to package the programs you need. But if you are on a hurry, you’ll probably face some problems because of that.The main repository for Solus currently contains around 6500 packages 1) By counting the package entries in the main repository file:. That’s definitely a great effort for an independent Linux distribution. However, if compared to Debian, Red Hat or SUSE. That number is small.

And that’s natural for small communities unlike those 25-years-old big distributions. But was using an independent packaging system other than dpkg or rpm necessary in the first place? I doubt.Since Python is lacking some efficiency – according to the developers – they are switching for another package manager called ““.

Which is written in C from scratch just for Solus. It’s still not default yet.One of the nice things in the desktop is the usage of “Clear Sans” font. It gives an astonishing look and feel for applications everywhere on the system. It was really a great choice: Solus Default Fonts. P.S: GNOME Tweak Tool isn’t installed by default on Solus.Solus uses some GNOME applications. This is Gedit. You can notice that all the settings are available from the menu to access.

I hoped this would happen also on the normal GNOME Shell interface, but unfortunately, GNOME developers have their own way in life:One of the main things about Solus is “software optimization”. You are using the same libraries and tools that exist on other Linux distributions. However, on Solus, they would give you better performance. Check the to see some results.As a personal experience, the system is ultra fast and lightweight. It actually uses around 300 MB of RAM (rest is cache) after booting up. This is the output of free -m: root@mypc /home/mhsabbagh # free -mtotal used free shared buff/cache availableMem: 3452 303 2890 86 258 2848The booting process takes around 2 seconds only to complete: root@mypc /home/mhsabbagh # systemd-analyzeStartup finished in 952ms (kernel) + 625ms (initrd) + 450ms (userspace) = 2.028sThose results were retrieved on a Lenovo Thinkpad x260. Which runs on an SSD drive.There’s a small problem on Solus which prevents using Alt + Shift to switch keyboard layout language.

Even after adjusting this setting from the control center, the problem is still there. You’ll have to use Super + Space.Other than that, during the days and weeks of using the latest snapshot of Solus.

We didn’t face a single bug or crashing in the system. Which is an extremely rare thing those days. The Bottom LineSolus is a promising Linux distribution. They have done a lot of work on developing and optimizing their own set of programs and libraries.

The ultimate system provided to the user is bug-free and is well customized for end users. The operating system is also fast and lightweight. Building the distribution from scratch definitely was a good option for this one.Because of the small size for the Solus community comparing it to Debian or Fedora, and because of its usage for its own packaging system. Some software and libraries may not be available. The distribution, however, provides most needed software for daily purposes in its main repositories.

Which covers most of users needs.You can go ahead.

In The Solus Project, you control the last survivor of an expedition designed to save the human race. After a rogue celestial object blasts the Earth into a floating pile of rubble, the last vestiges of mankind survive on colony ships in search for a new home. From these ships, smaller exploratory vessels were launched to determine the viability of three possible golden worlds.

Our story focuses on Gliese-6143-C, a large planet that shows promise as a habitable world. All goes well until a bolt of green energy blasts the ship out of the sky and onto the surface below. As a sole survivor of the incident, it's your responsibility to restore communications with Solus Project command for rescue and determine whether or not the humanity can survive on Gliese. Standing in the way of that goal is a harsh lesson in survival as unpredictable weather patterns and a mysterious creature hiding out in the ruins of a long-dead alien civilization threaten your progress. After investing hours with this planetary survival adventure, I’m convinced that The Solus Project is actually two different games. Navigating the surface of Gliese-6143-C and scrounging for sustenance is similar to the games like Rust where you must brave the elements by crafting supplies using the planet’s resources as well as those found from the wreckage of the explorer ship.

On top of that, managing the player’s well-being means keeping her (of him) fed, warm and dry. I really love how The Solus Project uses extreme weather patterns to keep the player moving and seeking out for a shelter.

Warm and sunny afternoons can easily give way to sudden tropical storms while quiet evenings can be interrupted by massive tornadoes and blistering winds.The worst scenario, however, is when the scrounging missions are interrupted by freaking meteor showers that rain hot, rocky death from above. Waiting out these natural phenomena have a tendency to ramp up the tension as you try to remember the locations of protected campsites for safety and shelter. Sleeping advances time but also offers a healing boon depending on how long you rest. Bear in mind that sleeping out in the open runs the risk of being interrupted by rainstorms and other unpleasant happenstances. Death is a close friend in The Solus Project and the threat of hunger, dehydration, hypothermia and fall damage is enough to doom mankind to a total extinction if you’re not careful.Exploring under Gliese-6143-C is pretty different from its surface. Underground adventures were mostly unexciting because of their linearity.

The cave system follows a design of extremely long passages connected by the occasional wide open room housing alien temples, homes and other notable structures. While time on the surface is marked by scrambling for the shelter and crawling towards the water and food sources, spelunking deep below involves walking through tunnels and uncovering a secondary narrative. The tunnel passages are punctuated by stone tablets marked with symbols that provide insight as to how an alien civilization prospered after their first contact.The alien living spaces are refreshing to see after crawling through so many dark passageways. However, these places don’t have substantial value beyond some light puzzle solving.

There’s a lot of window dressing, including a large number of crates that - nine times out of ten - have nothing in them (so why bother wasting the energy to open every one you find?). There comes a point where things finally pick up after an encounter with creatures that resemble the smoke monster from the TV show Lost. These enemies provide a real sense of danger as they actively search out for all heat and light sources, forcing the player to come up with creative solutions to evade attention. The thing is, while I welcomed the change of pace, I honestly felt the mechanics of the encounters shoehorn unneeded stealth mechanics. Case and point: the first smoke monster had me scratching my head as to how to avoid attention.

After failing a few times, I chose simply to sprint past it. I took some damage - nothing that a few hours sleep couldn’t fix - and the monster chose not to pursue after me. The Solus Project makes a really good first impression. It has a vibe that made games like STALKER and Metro 2033 so enjoyable to me (note: the developer, Grip Digital, is based in Prague and the Czech Republic).

I also love the idea of being stranded on an alien planet and forced to survive and find a way back home. After a few hours though cracks begin to show in the facade. There are few qualities that I’ve come to expect in open world games and I’m surprised to find them missing here. For one, the game is in dire need of a map. The surface areas you’ll explore are quite large and dotted with helpful landmarks and points of interest, and still I got lost.

A map would mean better navigation, another issue I had trouble with. When not walking towards a big green objective marker, some mission objectives are vague “Explore” commands which essentially means “Wander around until you run into a specific, unmentioned point of interest.”I’m also not a fan of the limited inventory space. Initially, you’ll only have ten slots to carry items with. There’s a lot of stuff you’ll want to keep on hand, such as water bottles, food rations, medkits (if you can find them) and other essentials like a makeshift torch, tools, and the trusty teleporter. There’s also a ton of useless items that, oddly enough, are given value labels like “very rare” and yet, they don’t serve any greater function.

What am I supposed to do with the ship’s radio? Oh, I can play music. That’s cool, I guess. What about the shields? I can’t physically fight anything, so why bother making it something you can carry around? If there were some sort of storage or decorating mechanic a la Skyrim’s homestead DLC, that’d be cool.

I was about five or six hours into the game when I realized The Solus Project is compatible with the PlayStation VR. I more or less stumbled upon it after playing a different VR game and noticed a “Switch to VR” button on the main menu. I thought this would be really cool because up until now, I’d just been sitting on my couch eight feet away from the TV. The feeling of being transported to Gliese seemed exciting - until I had to use the Move wands to play.

I had grown accustomed to the DualShock controller and without any tutorial on how to use the wands or provided with a screen that outlined the controls, I was stumbling around blind. Had I known about VR compatibility from the start I might have enjoyed it more, though I doubt it would have made the game substantially better.The Solus Project kind of feels like No Man’s Sky without starships. The survival aspect is more robust and requires full attention to different health systems. The game could use a bit more polish in places, like better inventory management, more worthwhile exploration and more interesting caves.

Overall, The Solus Project is a pretty solid adventure that left me feeling surprised with how it hooks into at certain moments. Although it ended up being one of those games I played to have something to do while catching up on podcasts, I caught myself getting more and more intrigued by the whole affair.