Differences Between Solus and Ubuntu?

Jukeboxblues · 06-18-2021, 10:37 AM

Can anyone tell me what the differences are between Ubuntu and Solus aside from appearances of the desktop? I'm not techie so any discussions on kernals goes right over my head.

Thanks.

Timothy Miller · 06-18-2021, 11:00 AM

Ummm, everything, basically. They use different package manager, different desktops, different kernels, they have different repositories. Beyond the fact that they do happen to have many of the same software packages and they are both based on the linux kernel, they're as different as it can get.

pan64 · 06-18-2021, 11:01 AM

what about looking for an answer on the net?
https://embeddedinventor.com/ubuntu-...s-differences/
https://www.slant.co/versus/2689/2714/~ubuntu_vs_solus

The kernel is more or less the same, at least if you are not techie.

boughtonp · 06-18-2021, 11:05 AM

The Solus homepage and about page don't do a great job of explaining what it is, but the descriptions of Solus from DistroWatch and Wikipedia give an idea:

Quote:

Originally Posted by https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=Solus

Solus is a Linux distribution built from scratch. It uses a forked version of the PiSi package manager, maintained as "eopkg" within Solus, and a custom desktop environment called "Budgie", developed in-house. The Budgie desktop, which can be set to emulate the look and feel of the GNOME 2 desktop, is tightly integrated with the GNOME stack. The distribution is available for 64-bit computers only.

Quote:

Originally Posted by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solus_(operating_system)

Solus (previously known as Evolve OS) is an independently developed operating system for the x86-64 architecture based on the Linux kernel and a choice of the homegrown Budgie desktop environment, GNOME, MATE or KDE Plasma as the desktop environment. Its package manager, eopkg, is based on the PiSi package management system from Pardus Linux, and it has a semi-rolling release model, with new package updates landing in the stable repository every Friday. The developers of Solus have stated that Solus is intended exclusively for use on personal computers and will not include software that is only useful in enterprise or server environments.

How does that compare to Ubuntu? Quite a bit...

Ubuntu is developed by Canonical Ltd, a for-profit company. Solus has a team of six volunteers.
Ubuntu is not built from scratch, it uses Debian Testing as a starting point.
Ubuntu isn't a rolling release distro, there are major versions twice a year.
Ubuntu uses different tools for installing software.
Ubuntu uses a different default desktop (Budgie/others can be installed on Ubunutu, Gnome/others can be installed on Solus)
Ubuntu comes in Desktop/Server/Core editions - it does not limit its scope to home/office users like Solus does.

Does that answer your question?

Is there a reason you're interested in Solus specifically?

Jukeboxblues · 06-18-2021, 06:29 PM

Thank you for your comments. Solus, installed last week, was the first distro install that didn't fail like Mint, Linux Lite, and Ubuntu. But I was a little disappointed in their limited software center.

boughtonp · 06-19-2021, 09:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jukeboxblues

Solus, installed last week, was the first distro install that didn't fail like Mint, Linux Lite, and Ubuntu. But I was a little disappointed in their limited software center.

Fair enough. Wikipedia's distro comparison has a package count of 9,500 for Solus - which is about 10% of those available for more mainline distros.

All three of the ones that failed for you are Ubuntu-based, so it's potentially the same issue causing it. As noted, Solus is so different to Ubuntu that it's not a useful factor in knowing why it failed.

If you tried the Debian-based version of Mint that might shed some light (as well as being a friendly distro with plenty of packages if it works).

Alternatively there's MXLinux (also Debian based), or try another distro family entirely: Fedora or OpenSuse are both popular and have plenty of packages available.

Bonzoo · 06-19-2021, 09:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boughtonp

Fair enough. Wikipedia's distro comparison has a package count of 9,500 for Solus - which is about 10% of those available for more mainline distros.

All three of the ones that failed for you are Ubuntu-based, so it's potentially the same issue causing it. As noted, Solus is so different to Ubuntu that it's not a useful factor in knowing why it failed.

If you tried the Debian-based version of Mint that might shed some light (as well as being a friendly distro with plenty of packages if it works).

Alternatively there's MXLinux (also Debian based), or try another distro family entirely: Fedora or OpenSuse are both popular and have plenty of packages available.

What we have here are words of wisdom and experience. I'll add a touch. Antix. It'll run on an air compressor...LOL

!!! · 06-19-2021, 06:38 PM

@Jukeboxblues: I'm curious what / how all the Ubu's "failed" (for you)? Wine? (Does Debian [&MX] also "fail"?) (in Virtualbox?)
And Solus worked (what "worked"?)

How about a tiny strange one called Porteus
(because it's slackware based and there's a lot of slackware people here. Exton has a live 15beta, but it doesn't have the non-freeware Wi-Fi driver for my BCM43142 [103c:804a] and I've been too lazy to figure out how to build the driver)

Aayushhh4111 · 06-22-2021, 03:09 AM

I'm sure that you'll come to only one conclusion that Ubuntu is more stable, easy to use, and solid. That's why just go with it and don't look back because after using it for some time you won't ever look back to any other distro.