Solus 4.4 “Harmony” Released with Secure Boot Support, Linux 6.3, and More

This release ships with Budgie 10.7, KDE Plasma 5.27 LTS, GNOME 43.5, and MATE 1.27 desktop editions.
Marius Nestorby Marius Nestor0
Solus 4.4

Joshua Strobl announced today the release and general availability of the long-awaited Solus 4.4 ISO release of this independent, rolling-release Linux distribution featuring the Budgie, KDE Plasma, GNOME, and MATE desktops.

Dubbed “Harmony” and powered by Linux kernel 6.3, the Solus 4.4 release is here with Secure Boot support, Intel Arc support, better support for various light sensors and accelerometers, support for AMD Radeon RX 7600, 7900 XT, and 7900 XTX GPUs, support for NVIDIA 40 Series GPUs, and support for laptops with ATH11K Wi-Fi cards.

The kernel was tweaked in this release to enable zram by default, providing users with a better experience for computers with 3GB or less RAM. Moreover, the Solus kernel ships with the CONFIG_NFT_FIB_INET option enabled by default to allow the Firewalld/nftables firewall to work.

The flagship edition of Solus 4.4 is using the latest Budgie 10.7 desktop environment, which uses Cinnamon’s Nemo file manager by default instead of GNOME’s Nautilus, dual-GPU support in the Budgie Menu, notification sounds, new Budgie Screenshot app, and new power dialog for session management.

On the other hand, the GNOME edition ships with the GNOME 43.5 desktop environment with Dark Mode (and my wallpaper) enabled by default, and the Plasma edition ships with the KDE Plasma 5.27.5 LTS desktop environment, which is accompanied by the KDE Frameworks 5.106 and KDE Gear 23.04.2 software suites.

Noteworthy here is the fact that the Solus 4.4 Plasma edition now uses the Wayland session by default, the Plasma System Monitor app instead of KSysGuard, Kickoff as the default application launcher, and improved SolusDark and SolusLight themes.

Last but not least, the MATE edition ships with the latest MATE 1.27 desktop environment. However, the devs announced that Solus 4.4 will be the last release to ship with the MATE desktop as it’s not actively maintained as of late and it doesn’t have an active Wayland strategy.

The MATE edition will be replaced with an Xfce edition for the upcoming Solus 4.5 release.

“After evaluating MATE, we have concluded that it does not have a credible and active Wayland strategy, with the project itself effectively being on life support. As such, we have decided to sunset the MATE Edition,” said Joshua Strobl. “Going forward, to serve users looking for a simple, lightweight GTK-based desktop experience, we will instead ship an edition with Xfce in the near future.”

Solus 4.4 is available for download right now from the official website as Budgie, KDE Plasma, GNOME, and MATE editions supporting 64-bit systems. Since Solus follows a rolling-release model, existing Solus users need only to keep their installations up to date at all times to get the latest features.

Last updated 10 months ago

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