SolydK Back Office

SolydK Back Office is a special and open source edition of the SolydK operating system that includes several office-oriented applications. It is actually based on the SolydK Business Edition and features the modern KDE SC desktop environment.

Among the included office apps, we can mention the SeedDMS document management system, OrangeHRM human resource management solution, SiWapp online invoicing software, TYPO3 CMS, Zurmo CRM, ProjectLibre drop-in Microsoft Project replacement, Dia diagram creator, and LibreOffice office suite.

Availability, boot options, supported architectures

The distribution is freely available for download as two Live DVD ISO images, one for each of the supported architectures (64-bit and 32-bit). They can be deployed to USB thumb drives or written on blank DVD discs.

From the hidden boot prompt, which can be accessed by pressing any key on your keyboard during the ten second timeout, will allow you to start the live system with default options, in verbose mode (without boot splash), and in compatibility mode (better hardware detection).

Additionally, you can start an existing operating system that is installed on the first disk drive of your computer, run e memory diagnostic test, check the boot medium for errors (only if using a DVD media), as well as to reboot or shutdown the computer.

Same graphical session as SolydK and SolydK Bussiness Edition

As mentioned, the distribution features the KDE SC desktop environment, which provides users with the same great, modern and familiar graphical session that can be found on the SolydK Business Edition and SolydK operating system.

Besides the aforementioned office-oriented apps, it also includes the Mozilla Firefox ESR web browser, phpMyAdmin and Webmin administration front-ends, Mozilla Thunderbird email and news client, digiKam image viewer and organizer, VLC Media Player, K3b CD/DVD/BD burning software, and a Microsoft Word document viewer.

Bottom line

Being based on the business edition of SolydK, this office flavor comes with the same three year Long Term Support (LTS) specifications. It can be used by non-profit organizations, as well as at home or in small office/businesses.

What is new in this release:

• The Home Editions were upgraded to the latest Upgrade Pack and the Business Editions were upgraded with the latest security updates. This time I will not list the version changes of the major applications, but limit myself to the most important changes.
• The Live Installer now supports multiple drives which will give you the ability to install the home directory to a separate drive rather then another partition.

What is new in version 201407:

• Debian has started to move testing to systemd. The Home Editions use systemd while the Business Editions continue to use sysvinit. For the Home Editions, you will notice the difference during boot, but especially during shut down which now takes a lot less time. We can still need your help to improve boot time, though. Samba is on by default, and that is causing no significant improvement in boot time.
• If you're really into optimizing boot time, you can start by analyzing the output of these commands...
• systemd-analyze blame
• systemd-analyze critical-chain
• As from the last update kdenext was removed from SolydK. We are now tracking Debian KDE.
• The multimedia repository (deb-multimedia) has been removed from the ISOs. Some of the multimedia packages, and some codecs were added to our own repository. These packages might, or might not be legal to use in your country, but you can install them by checking the Multimedia check box during the installation. This option is selected by default.
• The current multimedia repository is still available, and you can continue to use it. If you want to remove the multimedia repository from your current system, and replace them with a Debian equivalent, you can use Grizzler's script as described in this tutorial: http://forums.solydxk.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=4367
• The KDE Display Manager (KDM) has been replaced with LightDM. If you want to replace KDM with LightDM on your current system, you can follow this tutorial: http://forums.solydxk.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=4368.

What is new in version 201405:

• Firefox and Thunderbird:
• Firefox ESR, and Thunderbird have been updated to version 24.5
• Both come with the same extensions as the home edition versions.
• Plymouth:
• The SolydXK Plymouth theme has been changed, and the Plymouth Manager has been adapted accordingly.

What is new in version 201401:

• KDE:
• KDE has been updated to version 4.12.1
• LibreOffice:
• LibreOffice has been updated to version 4.1.4-2
• Firefox and Thunderbird:
• Firefox has been updated to version 26.0, and Thunderbird to version 24.2.0
• Community packages:
• These packages were added to the community repository:
• grub-customizer, kdeconnect, plasma-mediacenter, xfce-theme-manager, xfwm4compositeeditor