Pretty good review this week in Distriwatch:
https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20180212#solus
https://www.cmscritic.com/solus-budgie-3-review-stable-fast-and-slick/
I tried Solus a few years ago. It's nice looking and very fast, but not being based on any other distro, it's missing a lot of things in its repositories that I need. But the Budgie Desktop has improved a lot with the most recent version and it's much more customizable than before. If you like it I would recommend installing Ubuntu Budgie rather than Solus, at least if your software needs are more academic like mine.
Thanks for sharing, Buster.
Have you tried the new version, Fox? It looks like perhaps they have more apps now though they still may not be the ones you're looking for. Apparently they have third-party
apps now but no telling how extensive the list is. When you build from scratch, you have to re-package everything yourself or hope users build and submit packages. It's really cool seeing a new distro that isn't just based on another one though.