Solus 2017.04.18.0 snapshot released; Introduces GNOME flavor for the first time

The Solus project has announced release of Solus 2017.04.18.0, latest stable snapshot of independently developed rolling GNU/Linux distribution. This release introduces a new flavor of operating system featuring a lightly tweaked version of GNOME shell. The snapshot includes various changes ranging from minute under the hood changes to user experience level improvements to provide best operating system to desktop users.

The oldest flavor of Solus, Solus with flagship budgie desktop ships budgie desktop 10.3.1, latest and possibly final release in budgie 10.x series. It comes with several usability improvements, bug fixes and new features. Some of the notable highlights of budgie desktop 10.3.1 includes alt-tab window switching feature, a long awaited feature in budgie desktop was developed by offering a monetary reward, ability to customize system clock on budgie panel, option to switch window control positions on raven panel, fixes for Gtk 3.22 and later, support for downloading of artwork for our MprisClient and adding code to prevent such artwork from being loaded twice and other numerous improvements.

Solus GNOME Edition
The Solus MATE edition is coming with latest MATE Desktop 1.18 and an update version of Brisk Menu developed by Solus in collaboration with other mate communities. Updated whisker menu supports better theme integration, newly introduced context menu, and customizable roll over behavior. This release also fixes several issues related to keyboard layout.

The Solus GNOME edition, a new flavor introduced by Solus project tries to ship almost a version of GNOME shell with minor amount of customization to ensure that users get the best GNOME experience. Solus GNOME edition is coming with GNOME 3.24, with Arc theme and gnome shell extensions like dash to dock, impatience (faster animations), top icons and chrome-gnome-shell extension.

Other common updates and improvements across all Solus editions includes
  • This snapshot is the first to deliver bulletproof boot management out-of-the-box, leveraging clr-boot-manager to enable the maintenance and garbage collection of kernels, as well as configuration of the bootloader (across GRUB2 for Legacy Boot and goofiboot for UEFI boot).
  • Our GNOME Stack has been upgraded to the 3.24 series.
  • Many improvements have been made to our graphics stack and enablement of the Linux kernel for this snapshot, as well as shipping the latest Mesa, 17.0.4.
  • This snapshot features Linux Driver Management, which is a modern, open source solution developed by us to enable NVIDIA Optimus support and paves the way towards supporting dynamic, switchable graphics across all hardware vendors in the future.
  • This snapshot delivers upgraded multimedia libraries and a new Pulseaudio
For a complete list of changes, features and previews see original release announcement in Solus project blog.

Download Solus 2017.04.18.0

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