Solus developer to work full-time on Linux distro Serpent OS

Ikey Doherty, one of the lead developers of Linux distribution Solus, will be working full-time on Serpent OS. That is a Linux distribution that mainly focuses on modern hardware. Doherty says he wants to start raising financing.

Developer Ikey Doherty writes in a blog post that he is quitting his current job to focus entirely on Linux distro Serpent OS. Doherty currently works at Codethink, but writes that he will start working for himself full-time as of July. “My focus and passion is with Serpent OS,” he writes. Doherty was already building his Serpent OS, but had too little time to seriously develop it. He was one of the lead developers of Solus OS, a distro with its own desktop environment called Budgie. After Doherty retired from Solus, he was already targeting Serpent OS as a spiritual successor, but so far that project hasn’t gotten off the ground.

Serpent OS uses, among other things x86_64-v2 binaries and according to the makers is mainly focused on performance. There are several benchmarking tools in the OS and it includes a mechanism the makers call Smart System Management, which allows multiple packages to be installed simultaneously while keeping the system small.

Doherty does not yet write about the roadmap for the distro in his blog post. He does say that he wants to start increasing the community around the project. In doing so, he also hopes to cut costs and seek new financial support.