KaOS, the lean and slick KDE based distribution announced its latest release “2020.07”.
KaOS is a rolling release distribution inspired by Arch Linux, that focuses only on one desktop environment and toolkit i.e. KDE Plasma and Qt. The goal of the operating system to be the most suitable operating system where all necessary tools work specially in KDE Plasma with all necessary dependencies. Hence the OS gives more importance to the packaging applications for KDE Plasma instead of developing native applications.
Table of Contents
What’s New in KaOS 2020.07
KaOS 2020.07 brings the latest KDE Plasma 5.19.3 which is the latest stable release of this desktop environment. KDE Plasma 5.19 brings a plethora of changes across the KDE applications, system settings, and widgets. All the applications and widgets are built using Qt 5.15.0.
The KaOS installer Calamares and keyboard layout now use more QML modules which is Qt modeling languages for user interfaces to be more Qt-centric distribution.
The native Midna theme which is used in KaOS is rewritten from scratch to Kvantum instead of QtCurve.
Other notable changes in KaOS includes LibreOffice 6.2 which is replaced Calligra as a default Office suite for KaOS, an addition of dedicated USB ISO file writer (IsoWriter), installer ISO now uses CRC and finobot enabled XFS filesystem as default, revamped artwork with custom icon themes for Midna and Midna dark themes.
Quick summary of the updates:
- Linux kernel 5.7.8
- KDE Plasma 5.19
- Included non-free Nvidia drivers
- KDE Applications 20.04.3
- LibreOffice 6.4.5
- Latest version of all Qt apps
- GTK apps:
- Firefox 78.0.2
- Chrome 85
- Thunderbird 78.0
- GIMP 2.10.20
- Ardour 6.2.0
For a detailed coverage of changes is available here.
Download KaOS 2020.07
If you are interested, you can download the KaOS 2002.07 ISO file from the below link and try via a LIVE USB.
Upgrade
If you are already running KaOS earlier release, you can simply run below from terminal to get the latest KaOS release installed.
sudo pacman -Syu
If you love KDE and want a stable rolling-release KDE Plasma-based Linux where all application looks and work smoothly with a Pacman package manager, then definitely you can try the latest KaOS for a spin.
Via announcement.
