KaOS 2018.01 is now available for download

Jan 20, 2018 19:53 GMT  ·  By

The development team behind the KaOS Linux operating system have released today the first ISO snapshot for 2018, bringing all the latest software and security updates.

First thing first, the KaOS 2018.01 installation snapshot includes patches for the Meltdown and Spectre security vulnerabilities publicly disclosed earlier this month by shipping with the latest Linux 4.14.14 kernel built with Retpoline support. Intel and AMD microcode firmware updates are also present.

This is great for new installations of KaOS, as users won't have to go to all the trouble to patching the operating system against Meltdown and Spectre. After installation, your system should be fully patched, but you can check for yourself if it's still vulnerable or not.

"All currently available patches and fixes for the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities in modern processors are included. The Linux 4.14.14 kernel is built with Retpoline enabled, latest AMD & Intel ucodes are also built into this kernel," reads today's announcement. "The Linux kernel has all the needed ucode build-in for a fully automated Early Microcode update."

Latest KDE software built against Qt 5.10, initial LVM support in Calamares

On the other hand, KaOS 2018.01 comes with all the latest KDE software updates, including the KDE Plasma 5.11.5 desktop environment and continuing with KDE Applications 17.12.1, KDE Frameworks 5.42.0, all built against the Qt 5.10.0 application framework.

The graphics stack was updated to Mesa 17.3.3, and systemd 236 is now the default init system. Apart from that, KaOS 2018.01 also ships with LLVM/Clang 5.0.1, Boost 1.66.0, ICU 60.2, Protobuf 3.5.1, Glib2 2.54.3, Libcdio 2.0.0, OpenCV 3.4.0, Ruby 2.5.0, and the Calamares 3.2 graphical installer, which features experimental LVM support.

For the first time, KaOS Linux now ships with an alternative desktop enviornment to KDE Plasma, called Liquidshell, which is a lightweight environment that's still in development at the moment of writing. You can download KaOS 2018.01 right now through our website, but existing users need only to run the "pacman -Syu" command.

KGet download manager
KGet download manager
Liquidshell desktop environment
Liquidshell desktop environment

KaOS 2018.01 (3 Images)

Calamares with experimental LVM
KGet download managerLiquidshell desktop environment
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