Finally, after a year of work, the much anticipated Solus 4 is here. It’s a significant release not just because this is a major upgrade, but also because this is the first major release after Ikey Doherty (the founder of Solus) left the project a few months ago.

Now that everything’s under control with the new management, Solus 4 Fortitude with updated Budgie desktop and other significant improvements has officially released.

What’s New in Solus 4

Solus 4 Fortitude

Core Improvements

Solus 4 comes loaded with Linux Kernel 4.20.16 which enables better hardware support (like Touchpad support, improved support for Intel Coffee Lake and Ice Lake CPUs, and for AMD Picasso & Raven2 APUs).

This release also ships with the latest FFmpeg 4.1.1. Also, they have enabled the support for dav1d in VLC – which is an open source AV1 decoder. So, you can consider these upgrades to significantly improve the Multimedia experience.

It also includes some minor fixes to the Software Center – if you were encountering any issues while finding an application or viewing the description.

In addition, WPS Office has been removed from the listing.

UI Improvements

Budgie 10.5

The Budgie desktop update includes some minor changes and also comes baked in with the Plata (Noir) GTK Theme.

You will no longer observe same applications multiple times in the menu, they’ve fixed this. They have also introduced a “Caffeine” mode as applet which prevents the system from suspending, locking the screen or changing the brightness while you are working. You can schedule the time accordingly.

Caffeine Mode

The new Budgie desktop experience also adds quick actions to the app icons on the task bar, dubbed as “Icon Tasklist“. It makes it easy to manage the active tabs on a browser or the actions to minimize and move it to a new workplace (as shown in the image below).

Icon Tasklist

As the change log mentions, the above pop over design lets you do more:



Close all instances of the selected application

Easily access per-window controls for marking it always on top, maximizing / unmaximizing, minimizing, and moving it to various workspaces.

Quickly favorite / unfavorite apps

Quickly launch a new instance of the selected application

Scroll up or down on an IconTasklist button when a single window is open to activate and bring it into focus, or minimize it, based on the scroll direction.

Toggle to minimize and unminimize various application windows

The notification area now groups the notifications from specific applications instead of piling it all up. So, that’s a good improvement.

In addition to these, the sound widget got some cool improvements while letting you personalize the look and feel of your desktop in an efficient manner.

To know about all the nitty-gritty details, do refer the official release notes.

Download Solus 4

You can get the latest version of Solus from its download page below. It is available in the default Budgie, GNOME and MATE desktop flavors.

Wrapping Up

Solus 4 is definitely an impressive upgrade – without introducing any unnecessary fancy features but by adding only the useful ones, subtle changes.

What do you think about the latest Solus 4 Fortitude? Have you tried it yet?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.





