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 Budgie, 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 was intended exclusively for use on personal computers and will not include software that is only useful in enterprise or server environments. On September 20, 2015, Ikey Doherty announced that "Solus 1.0 will be codenamed Shannon, after the River Shannon in Ireland", indicating that "codenames for releases will continue this theme, using Irish rivers." In July 2016, Solus announced the intention to discard the concept of fixed point releases and to embrace a rolling release model. In January 2017, Doherty announced that Solus will adopt Flatpak to reassemble third party applications. In August, Doherty announced that Solus also will adopt "Snaps" (next to Flatpak). On June 13 the same year, it was announced that the developer team had been expanded with Stefan Ric, and Ikey Doherty – previously working for Intel on Clear Linux OS – started working full-time on Solus. On November 2, 2018, technology website Phoronix published an open letter from original founder Ikey Doherty confirming that he was stepping back from the project, assigning "any and all intellectual, naming and branding rights relating to the ownership of Solus" to the development team "with immediate and permanent effect, acknowledging them as the official owners and leadership of the project." On January 1, 2022, experience lead Josh Strobl announced his resignation from Solus, after 6 years of involvement with the project. The Budgie desktop environment, originally created as a project internal to Solus, would be split out of Solus and developed independently under Strobl's newly founded Buddies of Budgie organization.