This past week, there has been some controversy about the new Plasma Login Manager, which launched with KDE Plasma 6.6 and requires systemd. Soon after, KaOS surprisingly announced it would stop using Plasma as its desktop environment.
Which, whichever way you look at it, is a significant shift, considering KaOS has used KDE for 12 years for its primary and only desktop environment and has always promoted itself as a Qt-focused and GTK-free Linux distribution.
As a response (though not directly addressing KaOS), KDE later shared its position on the matter, which I covered here. And then, a few days ago, KaOS posted an explanation of its decision on its official website.
According to the distro, the turning point came with upstream changes in systemd. Systemd 254 was the last release to fully support KaOS’s split /usr design, and later versions also dropped compatibility paths that affected the distribution’s setup. Trials to adopt Dinit as an alternative init system began in 2025, but that transition is complex.
KaOS developers also noticed that KDE was becoming more tied to systemd. They point to tools like DrKonqi and the Plasma Login Manager, which now need systemd, while non-systemd options are now considered “legacy.” The team decided that maintaining a non-systemd base while keeping Plasma fully supported would become increasingly difficult.
Because of this, KaOS decided to change its desktop rather than its system design. The 2026.02 release removes Plasma from the default ISO and uses Niri and the Qt-based Noctalia shell instead. Of course, Plasma is still in the distro’s repos, but this change ends KaOS’s 12-year KDE Plasma era and marks a new direction for the distro.
For more information, see KaOS’s announcement.
