The release of KaOS 2025.05 has been published, a distribution with a continuous update model aimed at providing a desktop based on the latest KDE releases and Qt applications. A specific design feature is the placement of a vertical panel on the right side of the screen. The distribution evolves with a nod to Arch Linux but supports its own independent repository containing over 1500 packages, as well as offering a number of proprietary graphical tools. The default filesystem used is XFS. Builds are published for x86_64 systems (3.8 GB).
Features of KaOS:
- On systems with UEFI, Systemd-boot is used for booting.
- An interface called IsoWriter is provided for writing ISO files to USB drives, supporting verification of the written images.
- LibreOffice is the default office suite, built with kf5 and Qt5 VCL plugins, allowing the use of native KDE and Qt dialogs, buttons, window frames, and widgets.
- The Croeso login welcome screen offers essential settings that may need to be changed after installation, and it also allows users to install applications and view information about the distribution and system.
- XFS is the default file system, with integrity checking (CRC) enabled and a separate btree index for free inodes (finobt).
- There is an option available to verify downloaded ISO files using digital signatures.
- The system login screen, powered by the SDDM display manager, has an option to start in Wayland mode, which will eventually allow for the removal of X11 components. When working with Wayland, the kwin_wayland composite manager is utilized instead of the commonly used Weston.
- In the installer (Calamares), in automatic partitioning mode, there is an option to select the file system (XFS, EXT4, BTRFS, and ZFS) without switching to manual partitioning mode.
- In the Phonon sound library, which is used for working with sound devices in KDE, the phonon-mpv backend is used by default, supporting Qt 6 (the old backend based on VLC has not yet been ported to Qt6).
In the new version:
- Desktop components have been updated to Qt 6.9, KDE Frameworks 6.14.0, KDE Plasma 6.3.5, and KDE Gear 25.04.
- Qt5 libraries have been excluded from the base installation, which remain available for installation from repositories. Applications Frescobaldi, Krita, Kamoso, and Calligraplan have been adapted for use in an environment based on Qt 6 and KDE Frameworks 6.
- Updated package versions include: Linux kernel 6.14, Systemd 254.24, Mesa 25.1.1, Glibc 2.4.1, Binutils 2.44, GCC 14.2.1, SQlite 3.49.1, Pacman 7.0.0, kmod 34.2, IWD 3.4, Poppler 25.05.0, Gstreamer 1.26.1, Pipewire 1.4.3, ZFS 2.3.2, Tzdata 2025b, OpenSSL 3.5.0, Proj 9.6.0, Protobuf 31.0.
- The package Nextcloud-client has been included, implementing a client for synchronizing data with the Nextcloud cloud.
- A program called Kjournald has been added, featuring a graphical interface for navigating systemd-journald logs.
- Experimental support for the Bcachefs filesystem has been added, which can be selected in the installer when using the manual partitioning mode. Support for Bcachefs is included in the kernel, but requires installation of the bcachefs-tools package from the repositories.
Source: opennet.ru
