The release of KaOS 2024.07 has been published, a distribution with a continuous update model aimed at providing a desktop based on the latest KDE releases and Qt-based applications. Notable design features specific to the distribution include a vertical panel on the right side of the screen. The distribution evolves with consideration of Arch Linux but maintains its own independent repository containing over 1500 packages, as well as offering a range of its own graphical utilities. XFS is used as the default filesystem. Builds are published for x86_64 systems (3.7 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.
- On the login screen, powered by the SDDM 0.20.0 display manager, there is an option to start in Wayland mode, which will eventually allow for the discontinuation of X11 components. When using Wayland, the kwin_wayland composite manager is utilized instead of the default 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).
- The GTK2 library has been removed from the repositories. The last significant application relying on GTK2 was the audio editor Ardour, which switched to using its own internal fork of GTK starting with version 8.4.0.
In the new version:
- Desktop components have been updated to Qt 6.7.2, the KDE Plasma 6.1.3 user environment, KDE Frameworks 6.4.0 libraries, and the KDE Gear 24.05.2 application collection.
- Experimental support for installing the distribution on a partition with the Bcachefs filesystem has been added. Partitioning in the Calamares installer is currently only possible in manual mode.
- Package versions have been updated, including Linux kernel 6.9, LLVM/Clang 18.1.8, Libgcrypt 1.11.0, Nettle 3.10, Systemd 253.22, Dracut 103, Pipewire 1.2.1, OpenSSL 3.3, OpenCV 4.10.0, OpenSSH 98.p1, and Mesa 24.1.4.
- The Kooka, Qdirstat, KWave, and Kaffeine applications have been ported to Qt6 and KDE Frameworks 6.
- Included is the note-taking application Marknote, which integrates with KDE Plasma 6.
Source: opennet.ru
