Two months after its previous 2025.01 release, KaOS, a rolling KDE-centric Linux distro betting on the XFS file system, released its latest stable, 2025.03 ISO, bundled with the most recent versions of the KDE Plasma desktop (6.3.3), KDE Gear (24.12.3), Frameworks (6.12), and is built upon Qt 6.8.3.
Notably, the Plasma 6.3 update includes a revamped Drawing Tablet page in System Settings, a more reliable fractional scaling mechanism, and improvements to color accuracy when using Night Light. Furthermore, the default Kickoff launcher menu has been modified so that categories only switch upon clicking.
In addition, Info Center now provides more extensive details about system hardware, displaying more information about GPUs as well as battery cycle counts. KWin also sees improvements, such as the KWin Zoom feature, enabling users to pinpoint individual pixels on demand.
Meanwhile, many applications—Krita, Scribus, QTox, Bibletime, and GCompris—are now ready to run with Qt6 and Frameworks 6.
Under the hood, KaOS 2025.03 has undergone numerous system-level updates. It ships with Boost 1.87, ICU 76.1, SQlite 3.49.1, Pacman 7.0, and Systemd 254.24, among others. The distribution has also shifted to the Linux kernel 6.13, providing enhanced stability and performance.
ZFS 2.3.1, GStreamer 1.26, Pipewire 1.4.1, and Mesa 25.0.2 are just a few of the many other essential components that have been upgraded in this release. Newcomers will be pleased to discover that Nextcloud-client, an open-source sync client for Nextcloud, has joined the repositories as well.
Another significant change is the addition of experimental support for the new bcachefs filesystem, widely regarded as a promising solution for balancing performance and reliability.
Although Calamares now supports it in manual partitioning mode, no specific bcachefs configurations are available yet. Nevertheless, the developers note it is an encouraging step forward for adventurous users who want to experiment with cutting-edge filesystems.
KaOS 2025.03 also includes a transition to phonon-mpv as the default sound backend. Since no official Qt6 port of VLC currently exists, phonon-mpv offers a fully Qt6-ready alternative. Moreover, the long-awaited removal of GTK2 means KaOS can finally concentrate on modern toolkits, thus streamlining maintenance and security.
Ardour, the last remaining holdout that relied on GTK2, now uses an internal version of YTK, paving the way for the distribution to remove GTK2 from its repositories altogether.
For those exploring Wayland, SDDM 0.20 now provides the option to run in Wayland mode by employing kwin_wayland. In addition, Calamares’s automated partitioning retains support for popular filesystems such as XFS, EXT4, BTRFS, or ZFS, so users who do not require a manual configuration will still enjoy a wide range of options.
Lastly, the Live system’s Welcome application includes an Installation Guide, while the post-install Croeso (Welsh for “welcome”) tool invites newcomers to customize their newly installed system with about 15 frequently used settings, a wallpaper selector, distribution info, and a variety of package groups.
The release announcement provides detailed information about all changes. The ISO image can be downloaded from the project’s Download page. Since KaOS is a rolling-release Linux distro, current users need only execute sudo pacman -Syu to upgrade to the latest version.
