KaOS is an independent rolling-release distribution inspired by Arch Linux and entirely focused on the KDE Plasma Desktop and related Qt Toolkit-based software.
Although it uses Pacman as its package manager, KaOS does not rely on software repositories developed and maintained by Arch Linux. Instead, the software is available from in-house repositories, built exclusively for 64-bit systems.
With the release of its latest update for the year, KaOS 2022.12, the distribution provides its users with yet another dose of pleasant surprises. So, let’s have a look at them.
Exploring the Exciting Features of KaOS 2022.12
To begin with the obvious – in keeping with its tradition of providing users with the best of KDE Plasma, KaOS 2022.12 ships with the most recent 5.26 version of the desktop environment. Apart from that, this update also includes the most recent software releases of KDE Gear 22.12 and KDE Frameworks 5.101.
KDE Gear is a collection of software maintained by the KDE community, and the newest 22.12 release features a lot of changes. First, we’ll highlight that Dolphin file manager now features a selection mode, which allows you to click or tap on files and folders to quickly and conveniently select the ones you want to work with.
In addition, Gwenview now allows you to control the brightness, contrast, and gamma, Kate has introduced the Keyboard Macro tool, and the Kalendar app now displays events in pop-up windows.
As we informed you earlier, the previous KaOS 2022.10 release included an exciting addition to the Calamares installer – the ability to install on top of ZFS, which provides all of the benefits of the ZFS file system.
Unfortunately, this new feature came with an issue. Users that chose ZFS as their filesystem had a boot problem after their newly installed system regenerated the kernel image. KaOS 2022.12 fixes this issue, and users can now fully utilize the ZFS file system.
Let’s look at the new apps included in the KaOS 2022.12 release. Kjournald is one of them who makes an especially significant impression. Every Linux system administrator knows the annoyance of viewing the system log in the terminal with the journalctl command.
Kjournald is a graphical application that makes this simple in a user-friendly graphical interface, and most importantly, you can apply filters to extract only the information you need.
Users also now have the Ghostwriter markdown editor at their disposal, which provides a relaxing, distraction-free writing environment, including a full-screen mode and a clean interface.
Under the hood, KaOS 2022.12 ships with the Linux kernel 6.0.12. In addition, of course, a number of the other core elements have also received updates, such as Systemd 252.3, Mesa 22.2.4, Bash 5.2, Glibc 2.36, Binutils 2.39, etc.
As in previous editions, new users will be greeted by Croeso, the app that will assist you with the initial settings after a fresh KaOS installation. It allows you to change various widely used settings on both the user and system sides of the operating system. Of course, users can also use the application later to help them configure their KaOS system.
You can refer to the official announcement for detailed information about all changes in KaOS 2022.12.
Download
KaOS Linux is a rolling distribution, so keeping up with the updates is enough to get you the latest packages. The command shown below will always give you the latest.
sudo pacman -SyuThe installation ISO image is also updated every few months to keep it up to date with all the latest changes for new installations, so you are not presented with a sizeable first update.
Users can download the latest KaOS 2022.12 installation ISO image from the project’s website for those wishing to carry out a new installation.
