Developers of KaOS have upgraded the operating system

Aug 16, 2015 08:01 GMT  ·  By

KaOS is a Linux distribution built from scratch that makes use of a customized KDE desktop environment and follows a rolling release model. An upgraded image of the distribution has been released and is now available for download.

KaOS is one of the few operating systems built from scratch that doesn't use another distro as its base. It's a lot more hard work for the developers, but it ensures that they have much more freedom to do as they please. Not being bound to a huge upstream project has its benefits.

It's worth pointing out that, technically, KaOS developers don't need to release anything periodically, but they do it for the convenience of new users. If you've just installed KaOS, which is a rolling release distro, and the image you used is five months old, you're going to have a lot of catching up to do. By releasing a regenerated image each month, the devs are making sure that new users can get up to speed really fast.

KaOS is not your regular KDE distro

Users will immediately notice that this is not just another distribution that decided to adopt KDE as the default desktop environment. Its developers make the effort to greatly customize the desktop and to make it stand apart from what everyone else is doing.

This is a distro developed according to a rolling release model, so all the changes are made through regular updates. The project doesn't really need intermediary releases, but it helps the new users a lot. Also, the makers of this OS don't just implement the latest KDE packages, they also customize it considerably, to a point where it no longer resembles the original.

"This ISO brings a long list of wonderful improvements to all of KDE. Biggest part undoubtedly is the first time to have the option to run Plasma 5 in a Wayland session. It still is in an early stage, so kwin_x11 is, of course, the default still. As for the desktop, this ISO brings all the latest of Plasma 5 (Frameworks 5.13.0, Plasma 5.4RC) and KDE Applications 15.07.90. All build on Qt 5.5.0. Plasma-volume-control is now part of the Plasma 5 group, renamed to Plasma-pa (for sound plasmoid)," reads the official announcement.

Check the official announcement for more details about this release. You can download KaOS 2015.08.11 right now from Softpedia.