Solus OS: Debian on steroids

Are you tired of all the new interfaces being pushed to you by Unity, GNOME Shell and, soon, Windows Metro? Do you want to stick to "good old" GNOME 2? Do you want to have a rock solid base for your operating system?

If your answers are "Yes", then I have something interesting for you, my readers, today.

Solus OS is a distribution for those who want to stick to the rock-solid stability of Debian and the classical GNOME desktop, without the blurb of Unity and GNOME Shell.

The distribution is relatively new. Their first official release happened on the 9th of May 2012. The latest release has version number 1.2 and codename Eveline. It was published mid-August 2012.

There are several variants of the Solus OS 1.2 distribution: with and without PAE, with legacy support and for 64-bit processors. You can get the ISO files with the distribution from one of several mirrors located in Ireland, Germany and USA, or from torrent. I downloaded the "standard" PAE-enabled version using the torrent link.

The ISO file size is 1 Gb, which means you can't get it onto the usual CD. Instead, you either need a DVD or a USB stick. The latter was my option. Of course, command dd did not work, for the BIOS of my laptop does not work with hybrid ISOs. I used Unetbootin to "burn" the ISO file onto my USB stick.

So, the preparations are finished. The USB stick is plugged into the port of my laptop, a Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pi 1505. Reboot. Choose to boot from USB. Let's go!

Solus Eveline 1.2: good for newbies

I am new to Linux and about 3 months ago tried Zorin 5.2 Core. I was very impressed with a Linux based operating system and decided to make my laptop a dual boot with Win7. I wanted a very stable Debian distro. I found Solus OS which seemed to have what I was looking for in a distro.

Solus comes in 32 bit and 64 bit editions and also in PAE and non-PAE, for those who want to use more memory. There are also Legacy editions.

The chief developer is Ikey Doherty. He was one of the original developers of LMDE.

I first tried the 32 bit install to my HP G60-549DX Notebook with a DVD as it is 1 gig.