KaOS is an independent rolling-release distribution inspired by Arch Linux but entirely focused on the Plasma desktop and related Qt Toolkit-based software, which recently celebrated its 10th anniversary.
Although it uses Pacman as its package manager, KaOS does not rely on repositories developed and maintained by Arch. Instead, the software is available from in-house repositories, built exclusively for 64-bit systems.
Today released, KaOS 2023.06 is the second update in this year’s 2023 series for this Linux distro. So, let’s have a look at what’s new.
KaOS 2023.06 Highlights
In keeping with its tradition of providing users with the best of KDE Plasma, KaOS 2023.06 ships with the most recent 5.27.6 release of the desktop environment. Apart from that, this update also includes the most recent software release of KDE Frameworks 5.107.
KDE Gear, a collection of software maintained by the KDE community, has been bumped to the newest 23.04.2 release and features a lot of changes, improving the Dolphin file manager, Kdenlive, and other KDE Apps.
Moreover, KaOS 2023.06 comes with SDDM 0.20.0, which has added the option to run the display manager on Wayland. Thus, the distribution is now very close to leaving X11 behind and switching entirely to Wayland.
The Calamares installer has also received attention, as users can choose from any common Linux file system, such as XFS, EXT4, BTRFS, or ZFS.
Under the hood, KaOS 2023.02 ships with the latest Linux kernel, 6.3.10. In addition, of course, a number of the other core elements have also received updates, such as Systemd 253.5, GCC 12.3.0, Glibc 2.37, Binutils 2.40, Python 3.10.12, Util-Linux 2.39.1, ZFS 2.1.12, GnuPG 2.4.2, and Libssh2 1.11.0.
On the app side, users get in the default installation Falkon 23.04.2 web browser as part of the KDE Gear app collection. Moreover, there are also mpv 0.35.1 and Haruna 0.11.1 media players. The popular LibreOffice office suite is presented with its 7.5.4 version.
The new apps in the KaOS 2023.06 release include Kjournald, a GUI that makes it easy to view the system log, and Tokodon, a Mastodon client that allows you to interact with the Fediverse community and easily read, post, and message.
To round off our review, we mention that while focused entirely on KDE Plasma, KaOS developers are already looking ahead to the upcoming Plasma 6. In this regard, there is a Plasma 6 preview ISO available.
But please, do not rush to rejoice. The ISO is only for test purposes and cannot be installed as the Calamares installer still needs to be ready for Qt 6, and only a few KDE Applications are available in their Qt6 version.
You can refer to the official announcement for detailed information about all changes in KaOS 2023.06.
Of course, since KaOS is a rolling distribution, there is no need for a new installation if you are already using it. To update to the latest 2023.06 release, type the below Pacman command, which always gives you the latest.
sudo pacman -SyuFinally, you can download the latest KaOS 2023.06 ISO image from the project’s website to perform a fresh installation.
