14 DAY TRIAL // The Evolve OS project has just changed its name to Solus after a trademark spat over a name owned by UK's Secretary of State office.
Some of you might remember the name Solus OS and that Linux distribution, which was quite famous back in the day. Ikey Doherty, the developer of that distro, had to abandon the project, but he latest started to work on Evolve OS. Unlike Solus OS, which was based on Debian, Evolve OS was built from scratch, which allowed the developer and his team much more control over the process.
We wrote a couple of days ago that the Evolve project got a letter from the Secretary of State informing them that a trademark was being infringed and that they had to change the name. After a couple of days of deliberations and hundreds of suggestions, the team decided to go back to Solus, which is already owned, and it should present no problem in using them.
The new Solus is not Solus OS
Some members of the community are still blaming Ikey for dropping the Solus OS support and they might think that they have a second chance with the new Solus (former Evolve OS), but the two systems are quite different. They do share vague desktop design resemblance, but it's nothing more than that.
"Thank you, everyone for helping us in the naming process! In that time, one name cropped up time and time again. A name we do own, and one indicative of our history and roots. Most importantly, the longevity, history and direct, traceable link of this name provides absolute and irrefutable evidence of prior art, and all rights to the name within this context. We have purchased solus-project.com and solus-project.net. Thus, Evolve OS will now be known (once again) as Solus. The full name for the operating system component of the project (i.e. the Linux distro) is Solus Operating System - the entirety of the project is the Solus Project," wrote Ikey Doherty.
So, there you have it. Solus lives again, but it's only in name this time. It's still in development, and it incorporates a new desktop environment called Budgie, build by the same devs. You can check our screenshot tour to get an idea of how it looks and feels.