KaOS with KDE 6
Recently became known the release of the new version KaOS 2024.01, this being the first major release of this year and which adds the new version of KDE Plasma 6 RC2, to which some details are still being refined.
KaOS 2024.01 represents release that introduces significant changes, the most notable being the definitive step towards Plasma 6 as the default desktop environment and thus marking the end of Plasma 5 on KaOS. And the KaOS team mentions that during the last fifteen months, it has been intensely dedicated to the complete migration to an environment based on Frameworks 6 and Plasma 6.
For those unaware of Shirt they should know that unlike other distros, it was developed from scratch. According to its developers, its goal is to be more differentiated. Among them, a limited selection of applications or exclusive support for 64-bit architecture.
Main news of KaOS 2024.01
In this new release that is presented of KaOS 2024.01, as already mentioned the most important news es the transition to KDE Plasma 6, and the release of Plasma 6 Release Candidate 2 is considered polished enough to offer a superior user experience compared to Plasma 5. For the Plasma 6 desktop, the latest versions of Plasma (5.93.0), KDE Gear (24.01.95) and Frameworks (5.249.0) are included, all built in Qt 6.6.1.
Another highlight of the new version of KaOS 2024.01 is the updating the base of system packages, since this release offers us the Linux kernel 6.6.14, Systemd 254.9, graphics stack table 23.3.4-1, the KDE Frameworks 6-RC2 libraries and the KDE Gear 6-RC2 application collection. For applications that have not yet been ported to KDE 6 technologies, packages with KDE Frameworks 5 libraries are included.
In addition, the included updates of: Wayland 1.22 FFMPEG 6, Boost 1.83.0/ICU 74.1, LLVM/Clang 17.0.6, Python 3.10.13, Util-Linux 2.39.3, IWD 2.13, MariaDB 11 and Postgresql 16.
Also, the version SDDM 0.20.0 adds the option to run this display manager in Wayland mode, which in the future will allow you to refuse to ship X11 components. When working with Wayland, SDDM uses the kwin_wayland composite manager instead of the standard Weston one.
Regarding the installation experience, the Calamares installer now offers the automatic partition option in which it is possible to select file systems (XFS, EXT4, BTRFS and ZFS) without switching to manual partition mode.
Finally for those interested in knowing more about it about this launch, you can check the details within the official announcement In the following link.
Download KaOS 2024.01
Finally, if you still do not have KaOS installed on your computer and you want to download and install this Linux distribution focused on the KDE desktop environment on your computer or you want to test it under a virtual machine. Builds are released for x86_64 (3.3 GB) systems.
You just have to go to the official website of the distribution and in its download section you can get the system image. The link is this. You can save the downloaded image to a USB device with the help of the Etcher application.
It is worth mentioning that this release of KaOS offers a migration process by including applications ported from the Frameworks 6 branch in the previous ISO snapshots. Most of the applications that users are accustomed to seeing in the Frameworks 5/Plasma 5 release are available as ports of Frameworks 6/Plasma 6.
For those applications that are not yet ready, Frameworks 5 is still packaged for use in a Plasma 6 environment. However, parts of Plasma 5 that are not yet ready will not be available in the KaOS repositories until their ports are ready. for daily use.
Si you are already a KaOS user, you must have received these updates in the last few days. But if you don't know if you already have them installed, just open a terminal and run the following commands in it:
sudo pacman -Syuu
With this, you only have to accept the updates if they exist and I recommend restarting your computer.