Solus Linux 4.5 Released With AMD ROCm Support, PipeWire Default & Calamares Installer

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Solus Linux 4.5 Released With AMD ROCm Support, PipeWire Default & Calamares Installer

The Solus 4.5 Linux distribution is out today as a big update to this original distro that is known for its Budgie desktop environment and other innovations over the years. Solus 4.5 brings some pretty big changes this time around and a nice step forward over Solus 4.4 from a half-year ago...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Solus-4.5-Released

[sophisticles]

I think i will download and try this, I remember trying Solus when it first came out and liking it a lot.

My biggest concern is how much of a pain is it to get OCL working with Intel graphics, as i currently do a lot of OCL + Python programming and the Intel OCL software stack is geared towards Ubuntu iirc.

That's really the biggest obstacle distributions face, Ubuntu seems to have become the defacto standard for many Linux uses and getting certain things working with Fedora, OpenMandriva, or other distributions can be a major PITA.

[ermo]

I think i will download and try this, I remember trying Solus when it first came out and liking it a lot.

My biggest concern is how much of a pain is it to get OCL working with Intel graphics, as i currently do a lot of OCL + Python programming and the Intwl OCL software stack is geared towards Ubuntu iirc.

That's really the biggest obstacle distributions face, Ubuntu seems to have become the defacto standard for many Linux uses and getting certain things working with Fedora, OpenMandriva, or other distributions can be a major PITA.

Please do -- we're actively looking for users with Intel (ARC) GPUs.

When I tested Open CL on an older skylake igp with the `clpeak` benchmark in preparation for syncing the OpenCL stuff to stable, OpenCL worked fine.

Here's hoping it also works for you.

[rcurious]

It's nice, that somebody puts effort to GPU setups, but there is ROCm 6.0 already.

[Danny3]

Nice to see a distro finally taking PipeWire seriously, plus 1 for that!
But I don't see them mentioning WirePlumber too, shouldn't that be installed too?
Also I don't see them mentioning if the Bluetooth part of PipeWire has the experimental config to return the battery info too.
It would be great to be able to see the battery level of our Bluetooth speakers and headphones.
Nice to see also that the piece of shit ROCm is dealt with as I hate installing it myself.

For Plasma I don't see them mentioning the Frameworks version too, I wonder why?
Good to see that they are planning for Plasma 6 support!

It's also nice to see that they deprecated and plan to remove MATE as XFCE fulfills that role and arguably does it better.
This being another thing that I didn't like about Linux Mint.
Seems to me that Solus developers are really smart and prioritize quality over quantity!

Congratulations to the Solus team!

[spicfoo]

Nice to see a distro finally taking PipeWire seriously, plus 1 for that!
But I don't see them mentioning WirePlumber too, shouldn't that be installed too?
Also I don't see them mentioning if the Bluetooth part of PipeWire has the experimental config to return the battery info too.

Pretty sure Red Hat which has worked on PipeWire for years and years takes it seriously and Fedora shipped it by default first in early 2021 takes it seriously. PipeWire is a critical component in the modern display stack so every major distro will take it seriously anyway. It's merely a matter of time. WirePlumber doesn't need to be called out separately. It is the default session manager of PipeWire and no, distros aren't going to enable experimental bluetooth features by default. Bluetooth stack with that experimental feature is not part of PipeWire at all fyi. It is completely independent.

[Danny3]

Pretty sure Red Hat which has worked on PipeWire for years and years takes it seriously and Fedora shipped it by default first in early 2021 takes it seriously. PipeWire is a critical component in the modern display stack so every major distro will take it seriously anyway. It's merely a matter of time. WirePlumber doesn't need to be called out separately. It is the default session manager of PipeWire and no, distros aren't going to enable experimental bluetooth features by default. Bluetooth stack with that experimental feature is not part of PipeWire at all fyi. It is completely independent.

I saw that Pulse audio is mentioned a lot here:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49078659/check-battery-level-of-connected-bluetooth-device-on-linux

And here:

https://linuxiac.com/pulseaudio-16-released-with-bluetooth-battery-level-reporting-support/

Also here:

https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Notes/16.0/#bluetoothdevicebatterylevelreportingadded

Which strangely I don't see it reported as "experimental" as I saw before.
Maybe that's just for the old devices as exsplained here:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Bluetooth#Enabling_experimental_features

So now I'm confused if it's experimental or not in PulseAudio 16.
But if it's not and PipeWire supports PulseAudio 16, then it should work.
Or at least add the config with that line commented out so we can just uncomment it to make it work.
Same if it's indeed part of the Bluetooth stack and doesn't work just by enabling it in the PulseAudo / PipeWire config.

[Estranged1906]

It's also nice to see that they deprecated and plan to remove MATE as XFCE fulfills that role and arguably does it better.

I don't necessarily disagree, but why is that? To me, they're both the same. GTK3-based, X11-only, traditional layout, relatively customizable, relatively low resource usage. Basically, an alternative for those for whom KDE Plasma is too fancy and GNOME is too stupid.

[spicfoo]

So now I'm confused if it's experimental or not in PulseAudio 16.
But if it's not and PipeWire supports PulseAudio 16, then it should work.
Or at least add the config with that line commented out so we can just uncomment it to make it work.
Same if it's indeed part of the Bluetooth stack and doesn't work just by enabling it in the PulseAudo / PipeWire config.

Reading a bunch of outdated links are going to keep you confused. We have gone through this before, there is nothing PipeWire can do by itself to enable the battery status to show up. This is handled by the independent Bluetooth stack. Distros aren't going to enable it by default unless it is out of experimental status. Plain and simple. You can confirm this by doing the tests yourself instead of relying on random links to inform you.

[oleid]

Nice to see a distro finally taking PipeWire seriously, plus 1 for that!
But I don't see them mentioning WirePlumber too, shouldn't that be installed too?

I recently installed current Debian stable and pipewire+ wireplumber was installed by default, AFAIR.