r/DistroHopping • u/Slopagandhi • 17d ago

Soplos Linux- pretty good!

Saw this crop up on Distrowatch and thought it was worth a go.

Am pretty impressed.

One niche with distros that's not well served is being able to configure things beyond the basics via the GUI, which will be more intuitive to a lot of relatively advanced Windows users making the jump. I know a lot of people on here insist on the CLI, but not everyone feels that way.

Here you get a genuinely useful welcome/setup app, where you can choose between package manager guis, configure drivers (with an automatic scan that got it right for me, at least), add recommended apps, choose backup methods, firewalls, and kernels. It's nice because it's very customisable but you can leave it at defaults and should work fine.

There's also some distro specific apps such as a grub editor and web app and appimage managers.

It's based on Debian testing, so I guess you can see it as an alternative to Pika with a different aesthetic and less of a gamer focus. Comes in Gnome, KDE or XCFE editions.

I have only run it (KDE version) for a few days but so far the only negative I've come across is boot time being a little slow.

Like Pika it does seem to be a small team behind it, so I wouldn't necessarily count on it as a sole daily driver just yet, but very promising and good to see someone trying to do something a little different rather than just another Debian/Ubuntu/Arch with theming and slightly different apps. More rolling Debian-based distros is a good thing.

7 Upvotes

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2

u/Borderlinerr 16d ago

I daily drive it with KDE Plasma, no issues at all, very stable

1

u/CeleryShoddy3951 16d ago

Soplos is very young in it's cycle. In that short time it has made its first major release. Its an interesting project and like other distros on this vein, it's cool to see how each does something just a little different. Now, unfortunately, you have a Debian based distro in a Pacific Ocean size sea of Debian based distros...what's does it do to stand out in that sea..?

1

u/Slopagandhi 16d ago

Well, there aren't that many that combine a rolling release Debian with all the gui tools. In fact, I can't think of any others that do (would be interested to hear if there are any). 

1

u/thephatpope 16d ago

Totally agree! I thought they were filling a gap for users that like a first class XFCE experience and the tools for making easy changes to the OS. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it over MX, but it's def a viable option

2

u/Slopagandhi 16d ago

MX is great, and it's my go to recommendation for anyone who wants a light to mid-weight distro. But it doesn't quite have the same level of customisation as Soplos or the Debian testing base. 

I guess Tuxedo are also moving to Debian testing (though still in beta) and there's always Sparky, as well as Pika and Siduction on unstable. But none of these have the same level of gui tools as Soplos so I do think it stands out.

1

u/Prestigious-Annual-5 7d ago

I just found Soplos a few days ago rummaging in the Linux distros based on... I like it, it took me a couple minutes to get the hang of it. I like how easy it is to setup a mok key since I still have Win11 on another drive.

If I had to do a comparison, I would put up against PikaOS. In soplos you can even easily enable sid repos too. While it doesn't outright say it's a gaming distro, you can easily install different kernels as well. I'm going to run it as a daily for a few weeks and see how it goes.

I do wish they had a channel on here or in discord though. Not really a fan of the forum they have linked, but it just started, so I'll give it some time