On the disc

FOR GRUMPY TEENS

REC. SPECS: 2GB MEMORY, 10GB DISK

Solus 4.1

64-bit

Solus is an independent distro that first appeared in 2012. Since then it has brought many innovations: its own Budgie desktop (with its gothically titled Raven sidebar), the Steam Linux Integration tool (sadly now defunct), its bespoke package manager (eopkg) – and it has also nurtured an enthusiastic community.

It’s been nigh on a year since Solus 4.0 (Fortitude) was released (see our review in), so we were excited to see what’s new in this update. Solus is popular with gamers, and this new release comes with the widely discussed ESync fixes streamlined, and support for third-gen Ryzen processors plus new GPUs from AMD and Nvidia. Besides the new kernel (5.4.12) there’s also updated Mesa (19.3.2), and (1.16.2) packages, as well as various multimedia improvements. All of which should contribute to a slick audio-visual experience.