SolydX 201309 Review: Simple, effective and efficient, as good as Linux Mint!

All those users fretting over the demise of Mint Debian XFCE spin can now rejoice with SolydX. It aims to provide users a simple, stable and secured operating system and targeted to small businesses, non-profit organizations in addition to the home users. SolydX is based on Debian testing branch and hence, gets updated applications more quicker than Debian stable. I tested the earlier releases and was very happy with it. However, I didn't get time to pen down a review. So, here I am finally with a review of one of my favorite distros, SolydX, more specifically the 201309 release of the same.

From SolydX 2013.09 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

The present release of SolydX brings on the table XFCE 4.10 and Linux kernel 3.10.2. I downloaded the 1.1 GB 32-bit ISO and created a live USB using Unetbootin. Next, I booted it on my Asus K54C laptop (2.2 Ghz Core i3 processor and 2 GB DDR3 RAM, Intel HD graphics 3000), checked if everything worked fine and when satisfied, installed it on a 12 GB HDD partition.


On live boot, I was greeted by a Welcome screen, detailing the driver and community help options. Definitely good for a newbie. Post installation also, the same screen appeared and I unchecked the "Show at startup" option at the right bottom. Otherwise, it may become a bit annoying.

From SolydX 2013.09 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

Aesthetics
SolydX comes with a single panel XFCE like Mint, professional looks and the typical crisp SolydX wallpaper. Though I use XFCE as one of my production distros but never prefer the two panel look. So, single panel works well for me along with a docky.

From SolydX 2013.09 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

Though SolydX looks clean but it appears a bit boring to me. All the pre-installed wallpapers are variants of the default SolydX wallpapers making it further monotonous. However, even in office I like to jazz up my desktop a bit. So, I installed a docky, set it's theme to greyscale and installed a conky to spice it up a bit.

From SolydX 2013.09 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

The standard XFCE menu in SolydX is a bit complex for me and finding applications isn't easy without typing the name. I prefer a more simplified menu. So, I found docky very helpful in easy access of the preferred applications.

Enabling Compositing
Compositing is not enabled by default in SolydX. To enable, simply go to: Settings Manager -> Window Manager Tweaks -> Compositor and check "Enable display compositing".

From SolydX 2013.09 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

Conky and docky don't work properly without compositing. Especially the conky looks a bit ugly with black shadow as background.

To add further glamour, I checked "Show shadow under regular windows"; it gave a subtle shadow at the edges of the open windows and a 3D like effect.

Hardware Recognition
Like it's predecessor, Linux Mint Debian, SolydX, too, worked right out of the box. It correctly recognized my laptops display, touchpad, wifi, LAN and soundcard. Everything fell into place right from the live boot itself and I didn't face a single issue while using the distro for about a week.

Though SolydX automatically recognized my touchpad and allowed vertical scroll, but I had to enable single and double tap functions manually, from the settings managers.

From SolydX 2013.09 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

Applications
I like the application list I see in SolydX. It has got almost all essential applications and barring one or two, rest all qualify to be lightweight.

• Office: Abiword 2.9.2, Gnumeric 1.12.4, Dictionary, Document viewer, Orage calendar, Orage Globaltime
• Internet: Firefox 23, Thunderbird 17, Pigdin IM, Transmission, Xchat IRC
• Graphics: GIMP 2.8.6, Ristretto Image Viewer, Shotwell Photo Manager, Simple Scan
• Multimedia: Exaile, VLC 2.0.8, Xfburn
• Accessories: Application finder, Bulk Rename, Catfish file search, Clipman, Calculator, GtkHash, ImageWriter, Luckybackup, Mousepad, Notes, Root terminal, Screenshot, Synapse, Xarchiver, Firewall, Gdebi Package Installer, Gparted, Print Settings, Terminal

The good point about SolydX is that it doesn't dump the entire repository with obscure applications which anyway I am never going to use. It provides only the utility applications required for daily usage.

Multimedia codecs and Adobe flash plugin are pre-installed in the distro which is definitely helpful for the new users. I could watch my favorite YouTube and Dailymotion videos in Firefox immediately after installation.

From SolydX 2013.09 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

I used Abiword and Gnumeric earlier and they are not as versatile as a LibreOffice. But never-the-less usable and runs well under low resource environment. In case, you have installed in a Dual core or more advanced laptop, my recommendation is to install LibreOffice from the Debian testing repos.

Also, I found Exaile music player to be quite good, lightweight and offer me decent performance. VLC is of course VLC and un-parallel as a video player. Too good!

Except Luckybackup, I tried out rest of the applications and all of them work as expected. Specially bulk rename was very helpful in renaming the snapshot files. Also, I feel Imagewriter is a good addition from the Linux Mint stable. I found the Mint image writer to be more versatile than unetbootin and it even works with Arch based and PCLinuxOS to create live USB.

Steam is not present by default in this update but can be downloaded from the repository. 

Settings are integrated like any other XFCE 4.10 distro. Further, I saw a lot of settings option available in the menu including printer settings.

From SolydX 2013.09 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

From SolydX 2013.09 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

Installation
Installation is similar to Linux Mint and definitely easier than Debian 7. Questions are usual, language, location, keyboard layout and language, user ID creation and finally, place where to install SolydX. SolydX uses Grub2 to boot and supports multiple booting with other distros.

From SolydX 2013.09 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

Repositories
As mentioned earlier, SolydX sources it's packages from Debian testing repositories. I checked the /etc/apt/sources.list and found that SolydXK provides some of it's own packages from third party repositories as well. For example, Mint specific applications, Skype, etc.

From SolydX 2013.09 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

The default GUI for package installation is Software Manager. It is exactly similar to Linux Mint Software Manager and works efficiently. Applications are nicely classified into categories and sub-categories, e.g. Internet and inside, Web, Chat, Email and File Sharing. I installed docky, conky and Skype using the same. The Skype for Linux doesn't look as attractive as the MS counterpart but never-the-less works well.

From SolydX 2013.09 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

From SolydX 2013.09 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

Further, Synaptic package manager is there as well. I found Synaptic to work faster than the Software Manager and is more efficient.

Performance
As I mentioned, like Linux Mint, everything worked as expected in SolydX. I got a decent battery life (unlike Debian 7) and pretty low resource consumption in SolydX. Generally the CPU consumption stayed at 0% while idle and hardly went beyond 50% during the usage with multiple programs running. At steady state, SolydX consumed about about 140 MB RAM and 0-5% CPU with task manager running. It is actually lower than the average RAM consumption (~ 160 MB, median) of all XFCE distros I used during 2012-13 (all 32-bit and recorded on the same machine - Asus K54C, under similar conditions).

Operating System (XFCE)	Size of ISO	Base	Desktop	Linux kernel	CPU Usage	RAM usage	Size of installation
Snowlinux 4 Glacier XFCE	727 MB	Debian	XFCE 4.10	3.5.0	1-5%	87 MB
Debian Wheezy XFCE	868 MB	Debian	XFCE 4.8	'3.2.0	1-5%	100 MB
Porteus 2.1 XFCE	147.9 MB	Slackware	XFCE 4.10	3.9.11	1-5%	100 MB
Snowlinux 3.1 Crystal XFCE	639 MB	Debian	XFCE 4.8	3.2.0	1-5%	110 MB
Linux Lite 1.0.4 XFCE	755 MB	Ubuntu	XFCE 4.8	3.2.18	1-5%	120 MB
Mint Debian XFCE	1.2 GB	Debian	XFCE 4.8	3.2.0	1-5%	125 MB
Bridge XFCE	696 MB	Arch	XFCE 4.10	'3.6.7	1-5%	130 MB
Linux Lite 1.0.0 XFCE	916 MB	Ubuntu	XFCE 4.8	3.2.0-32	1-5%	130 MB
SolydX 201306	1.1 GB	Debian	XFCE 4.10	3.9.6	1-5%	138 MB	3.7 GB
Mint 14 XFCE	914 MB	Ubuntu	XFCE 4.10	3.5.0-17	1-5%	140 MB
Mint 15 XFCE	992 MB	Ubuntu	XFCE 4.10	3.8.0-25	1-5%	140 MB	3.8 GB
SolydX 201309	1.1 GB	Debian	XFCE 4.10	'3.10.2	1-5%	140 MB	3.79 GB
Fedora 17 XFCE	705 MB	Fedora	XFCE 4.8	'3.3.4-5	1-5%	160 MB
Fedora 19 XFCE	617 MB	Fedora	XFCE 4.10	3.9.8	1-5%	160 MB	2.46 GB
Manjaro 0.8.3 XFCE	817 MB	Arch	XFCE 4.10	'3.4.24	1-5%	160 MB
Manjaro 0.8.7 XFCE	1.1 GB	Arch	XFCE 4.10	3.4.60	1-5%	160 MB	3.84 GB
Mint 13 XFCE	850 MB	Ubuntu	XFCE 4.8	3.2.0-29	1-5%	160 MB
Sabayon 11 XFCE	1.3 GB	Gentoo	XFCE 4.10	3.7.0	1-5%	160 MB
Xubuntu 12.04.1 LTS	715 MB	Ubuntu	XFCE 4.8	3.2.0-29	1-5%	160 MB
Xubuntu 12.10	727 MB	Ubuntu	XFCE 4.10	3.5.0-17	1-5%	160 MB
Xubuntu 13.04	827 MB	Ubuntu	XFCE 4.10	3.8.0	1-5%	160 MB
Emmabuntus 12.04.2-1.04	3.5 GB	Ubuntu	XFCE 4.8	3.2.0-39	1-5%	170 MB
Fedora 18 XFCE	694 MB	Fedora	XFCE 4.10	3.6.10/3.7.2	1-5%	180 MB
OS4 OpenLinux 13.6	1.8 GB	Ubuntu	XFCE 4.10	3.2.0	1-5%	180 MB	5.3 GB
Sabayon 10 XFCE	1.3 GB	Gentoo	XFCE 4.10	'3.5.0	1-5%	180 MB
Sabayon 13.08 XFCE	1.4 GB	Gentoo	XFCE 4.10	3.10.0	1-5%	180 MB	4.96 GB
Manjaro 0.8.2 XFCE	1.1 GB	Arch	XFCE 4.10	'3.4.18	1-5%	200 MB
OS 4 13.1	1.5 GB	Ubuntu	XFCE 4.10	3.2.0	1-5%	200 MB
Voyager 12.10	991 MB	Ubuntu	XFCE 4.10	'3.5.0	1-5%	200 MB
ZevenOS 5	734 MB	Ubuntu	XFCE 4.10	3.5.0	1-5%	220 MB

Numbers aside, SolydX is very smooth to use and except the convoluted menu, quite intuitive. Though I have used more efficient XFCE distros than SolydX, but as a package it is quite good and comparable to Linux Mint 14 XFCE, in terms of performance.

SolydX occupies about 3.8 GB of space which is quite decent and is not a space hogger.

Overall
SolydX is a kind of distro which grows on you as you start using it. It works definitely as efficient and stable as any Ubuntu or Debian XFCE spin I have used, including Linux Mint XFCE. Further, SolydX gives the advantage of a semi-rolling release and users need not to re-install a fresh distro every year (6 months now). Rest of the rolling release distros may not be suitable for Linux newbies and I myself broke quite a few times my Arch installation while updating. SolydX is definitely a better bet in this regard.

In terms of aesthetics, definitely I have used better looking XFCE distros. But, XFCE being highly customizable, I won't consider it as a barrier to adopting SolydX. I highly recommend SolydX to all Linux newbies as a distro worth trying. I guess the experts have already appreciated and started adopting this relatively new distro. As far I am concerned, I am using SolydXK for quite sometime and found it to be really good. 

You can download the 32 and 64 bit versions of SolydX from here.