SolusOS Public Consultation

It has become increasingly obvious there is some disparity amongst users about what is wanted for SolusOS, versus what is already “in the works”. I invite you all to read my small presentation on what is important for SolusOS, how things are looking, and what are realistic options are. It’s high time we looked at realistic alternatives as opposed to permanently reinventing everything.

I hope you all read carefully, and choose wisely. Hastily made choices may kill the project. Wise decisions will be of immense benefit, and we can start re-implementing our vision that existed in SolusOS 1, to SolusOS 2. Any change is possible, no matter how large it is. Go have your say.

 

The Presentation

Hello all!

Let’s start off real quickly here. We’ve evaluated several code review and bug tracker solutions now, and a working solution has now been found.

For a short time we’ve used Phabricator to handle both bugs and code-review, however it has not proven very intuitive for our users. With regards to code-review, it still proves to be overly complicated in introducing another layer of tools on top of Git (Arcanist). Automatic merging within the repository is also not possible, making its a code-audit system. Reporting bugs has been difficult for our users so we’ve been researching various combinations and solutions that would work for SolusOS and it’s community.

Gerrit

In place of Phabricator’s “Differential”, we now use Gerrit for our code-review. This is a true code-review system and directly manages the underlying git repository, enabling users to quickly get to grips with SolusOS development, packaging and contributing. This is a widely-adopted solution, and we’re extremely happy with the results so far. Consequently we will move all of our git repositories to the new Gerrit installation at http://code./

Note we will shortly remove “inf./” from our DNS, and shut down Phabricator. All patches will be transfered and re-applied to the new repos on http://code./

To see how quick and easy Gerrit is, check this demonstration video on Google+

A visual guide has also been created on the SolusOS Forums

Jira

In place of Phabricator’s “Maniphest”, we will now evaluate Jira. This will enable true project management, and real bug tracking. Multiple projects can be managed and individual components can also be created, also having their own “leads”. SolusOS is now entering a more mature stage, and having Jira will enable us to manage every aspect of all SolusOS related projects, including the upcoming Consort (Qt/Wayland) desktop. Not only this, but it will enable the rising stars in our community to step forth and manage various aspects of the project. SolusOS is being built for and by the community, and this would be of major benefit.

We’ve obtained an evaluation license for our Jira installation, and have just requested an Open Source license to use Jira free-of-charge for SolusOS. This would be a tremendous boost to the project! What we now need people to do is use Jira for *each and every bug* to show Atlassian that we’re serious, and deserve this open source license. The process usually takes around 14 days, so I want everyone to jump in and whip this blank canvas into shape. I cannot stress how important this is for the project.

Visit the bug tracker now and sign up!

I am pleased to announce the release of SolusOS 2 Alpha 9. Please note that this is intended for developers and testers, to give us early feedback on the distribution. Consequently this should not be used in production environments.

Alpha 9 comes with the 3.11 kernel using LZ4 compression, Xfce 4.10, Thunar 1.6.3, Firefox 24.0b9,  glibc 2.17, GLib 2.37.3, and many other goodies. We’ve completely changed the artwork to be more in tune with the SolusOS look. 155 commits have been made to the source repository since the release of Alpha 8. Of those commits, 25 were new packages. The root account has now also been disabled by default, as the installer adds a sudo user to the system.

Download (652MB)

8ed8ec7651bfc09caa38c93a1a54608a  SolusOS2-a9-x86.iso

SolusOS 2 Alpha 9 is a hybrid ISO, enabling you to boot it from a CD (burn as one) or from a USB HDD/Flash drive (using dd). Note that EFI support was not possible, given that EFI systems should be 64-bit. If you are still installing to a UEFI system, you must disable UEFI mode and use CSM (traditional BIOS). On some systems you’ll need to disable Fast Boot/BIOS, as well as ensuring you disable Secure Boot itself and retain a GPT disk. Newer UEFI firmware will not allow you to boot from an MBR disk, however if you use traditional partitions while using GParted on a GPT disk (after essentially disabling UEFI) and allowing it to install GRUB, you will be able to boot SolusOS 2. With that said, I in no way recommend this procedure as we’re in such an early alpha stage.

Continue reading →

Hello all!

I trust we’ve all had fun experimenting with SolusOS 2 Alpha 8! I’ve spent some time listening to feedback, and we’ve resolved a few bugs already. The biggest issue we have right now is that the current image is not installable. As we’re in the alpha stage, we can get away with employing a hacky approach for now. Continue reading →

Hello all and welcome to the new SolusOS website!

Right now we’re going through a rather large migration process inside of SolusOS. At present two different websites exist for our content, the NG website and the one we’ve just replaced. In the short future, we’ll be taking down ng./ and merging any content into this new website. We hope you enjoy the new look! This is all part of our transparency effort, and getting information to our users as efficiently as possible.

In Other News

We’ve been using Mercurial to manage our source repository on bitbucket for some time now, however we’ve recently just opened it up to the public as a shiny new Git repository. Commit history was rather broken after a few attempted conversions (Converting from Git to Mercurial is fine, the other way around is a bit harder) so we’ve started afresh. Users will notice that there is an Infrastructure link in the menu at the top of this page, which will take you to our new Phabricator installation. From here you can see exactly what is happening within SolusOS at any time, or even browse our source repository. Please note we are also now using Phabricator for our bug tracking needs (via Maniphest) to benefit from a more integrated solution.

Continue reading →