Mr. Joshua Strobl has announced the release of Solus 4.2, the latest update in the Solus 4.x Fortitude series. Solus 4.2 release comes in 4 officially supported desktop environments, the flagship Budgie, Plasma, GNOME, and MATE.

As an incremental release in the 4.x series, Solus 4.2 primarily focuses on package updates from upstream projects, including desktop environments and the Linux Kernel. With the latest enhancements from the upstream projects and drivers from Linux Kernel, Solus 4.2 offers a smoother experience and support for the most recent hardware components.

Solus 4.2 Featured Image Courtesy: Solus Project

What’s new in Solus 4.2 release?

Common updates

The following changes/updates are common in the four different varieties of the Solus 4.2 release.

  • Firefox 85.0
  • LibreOffice 7.0.4.2
  • Thunderbird 78.6.1
  • All of the Solus editions provide out-of-the-box support for multimedia playback. The video/audio players are different in each edition.
  • Linux Kernel 5.10.2 enables support for recent hardware components.
  • Mesa has been upgraded to 20.3.3 for better GPU support
  • ffmpeg 4.3.1, the latest in the 4.3 series.

The Budgie Edition

Solus 4.2 Budgie Edition

  • Budgie 10.5.2 which introduces budgie-desktop-view. This feature is implemented to support desktop icons when it is dropped from nautilus. So far, budgie was using the legacy versions of the nautilus to support desktop icons.
  • Budgie’s menu is updated to fix some of the common downfalls.
  • The system-tray plugin is completely rewritten to fix various issues.
  • The sound applet is updated to provide a dedicated mute button.
  • The position of the raven plugin is customizable now.

The GNOME Edition

Solus 4.2 GNOME Edition

  • Solus 4.2 GNOME edition brings GNOME 3.38 stack with all updates as on GNOME 3.38.3 point release.
  • Retains the following Solus GNOME related customizations.
    • Dash to Dock for quick and easy access to favorited and running applications
    • Drive Menu for quick access to plugged-in devices (such as USB thumb drives)
    • Impatience for faster animations
    • Top Icons for system tray icon support out-of-the-box

The MATE Edition

Solus 4.2 MATE Edition

  • MATE 1.24 release that contains numerous bug fixes and under the hood improvements.
  • Brisk Menu 0.6.2

The Plasma Edition

Solus 4.2 Plasma Edition

  • Plasma Desktop 5.20.5, KDE Frameworks 5.78, KDE Applications 20.12.1 and QT 5.15.2
  • Fixed in SolusDark Coloring for better visibility
  • Customized dolphin to always open with the home folder.

For further reading on Solus 4.2, read the official release announcement on the project’s blog.