Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Note: Due to the respectful and reverential tone used in Full Circle, almost no Get Smart jokes will be made.
Continuing our series about Linux distributions that are not from the Debian and Ubuntu family, this month we look at KaOS, an independent Linux distribution with some interesting goals that set it apart from most other current distributions. It aims to use one toolkit, one desktop, and one hardware architecture, to produce the best possible result for users, without many compromises.
The toolkit is Qt, the desktop is KDE, and the architecture is x86_64, which means it will run on Intel and AMD processor-powered 64-bit computers. This sharply focused set of aims, plus nine years as a rolling release, means that you would expect a distribution that is highly refined and it truly is.
Background
KaOS was started in 2013 and was initially called KdeOS for “KDE Operating System”. The name caused some confusion with the KDE desktop itself and potential copyright issues, too, so in September 2013, the name was changed to KaOS.
Because KaOS is a rolling release, there are no specific point releases. Instead, users get regular updates including application updates and, every four to six weeks, a new download version is posted for newcomers to use for installation. Each posted ISO file just incorporates the updates to that point in time, thus reducing the updates needed after installation. Once you have KaOS installed, the regular update process will keep it up-to-date, and there is no need to install a new version, ever.
While the rolling release concept does make managing your installation easy, it has the potential downside that as the software gets updated, particularly the kernel, old hardware may fall out of support and the operating system may stop working.
KaOS is a Linux distribution, so the kernel that powers it is Linux, of course, but the developers have their eyes on, one day, moving to the Unix Illumos kernel.
Being an independent distribution, KaOS is not based on another, “up-stream” distribution; instead it is built from scratch. The developers have also created their own software repository with 2,212 applications currently, which are each custom maintained for KaOS.
Despite the focus on applications that use the Qt toolkit, the KaOS developers admit that there are some GTK toolkit-based applications for which there is no Qt equivalent, like the Inkscape vector graphics editor. Also, while there are a few Qt-based web browsers, they tend to be lacking in features compared to their GTK cousins, and so downloads for those are provided in the repository.
The official website provides good documentation, including a page to search for application packages available, and even a complete applications list.
Getting KaOS
The advantage of the one desktop-one toolkit-one architecture focus is that KaOS offers only one download – so it’s easy to figure out which version to download. The website download page points you to a number of mirrors that host the single ISO file, all using https for download, with no bittorrent options.
I got the KaOS-2022.02-x86_64.iso file, which is the February 2022 update, from the SourceForge mirror. The download is a fairly hefty 2.8 GB in size, so you expect it will come with lots of applications and features and it actually does.
An SHA 256 sum is provided and it is always a good idea to run the test to make sure you have an uncorrupted ISO file to work with.
Installing
I used Ventoy 1.0.72 to put the ISO file onto a USB stick for booting. With a Ventoy-enabled stick, you just have to copy and paste the ISO file to the stick using your file browser. There is no unpacking or installation process, as Ventoy handles everything seamlessly on boot-up. I tested out KaOS over a series of live sessions.
The KaOS website notes that neither Unetbootin nor the Rufus ISO writer for Windows will work with KaOS, but I can report that Ventoy works perfectly.
System requirements
Despite having reasonably good documentation on its website, KaOS has no specified minimum hardware, probably because, in a rolling release over its nine-year history, system requirements are a moving target.
I tried KaOS out on a nine year-old desktop PC with a dual-core Intel Core i3-21203.30 GHz processor and 6 GB of RAM and I can report that it ran well.
Trying out KaOS
On first boot-up KaOS presents a very clean-looking KDE desktop, with the task manager bar unusually located on the right side of the screen, putting the menu button at the top. The default wallpaper is an abstract, gray, geometric design. The initial impression is clean simplicity.
The version of KaOS I got was about six weeks old at the time of my download and there was already over 1 GB of updates available for installation. Rolling releases do tend to have lots of updates as new application versions become available.
Because it is basically an unmodified KDE desktop, the usual method of launching applications is from the main menu, which works well. There, applications can be searched and selected from categorized sub-menus or from the “all applications” sub-menu. It is flexible and unobtrusive. Some icons have also been put on the taskbar, including for the web and file browsers, for quick access.
This KaOS version came with KDE Plasma 5.24, Linux kernel 5.14.21, and uses an implementation of the Wayland protocol display server by default. The initialization system is systemd 250.3, and the command-line package manager is Pacman.
KaOS does not use the very latest stable Linux kernel, but intentionally lags for at least six weeks until the next major update. As the developers explain, “the kernel is about the biggest cause for breakage in a rolling distribution, that is why this policy.”
Settings
Because KaOS uses the KDE desktop, it has a huge array of user choices for customization including two themes (light and dark), and five global themes, with Midna as the default plus Breeze, Breeze Dark, Breeze Twilight, and MidnaDark. There are also seven Plasma styles, 40 window border color choices, six window decoration schemes, five icon themes, two different cursor schemes, three different boot-up splash screens, and 48 really tasteful wallpapers. I think this helps explain why it is a 2.8 GB download!
Finding the task bar on the right side of the screen is a little unconventional. It can be relocated to any screen edge, though, so I moved it to the bottom which puts the “K” menu button in the bottom-left corner. That looked better to me but it might just be my LXQt user prejudices. Icons and the bar width can also be made bigger or smaller.
KaOS offers a lot of user choices, so it is easy to make it look and work pretty much how you want. The impression it gives is of being elegant and well-considered.
Applications
Unlike some distributions I have recently reviewed, including Fedora, SliTaz and Void Linux – which all come with a minimal list of applications, KaOS actually arrives pretty complete.
The default applications include: Arc 21.12.2 archiver Calamares 3.2.51 operating system installer Croeso 1.10 appearance and package controller Dolphin 21.12.2 file manager Elisa 21.12.2 music player Falkon 3.2.0 web browser Gwenview 21.12.2 image viewer Haruna 0.7.3 video player K3B 21.12.2 CD/DVD burner Kamoso 21.12.2 webcam Kate 21.12.2 text editor KDE Partition Manager 21.12.2 Konsole 21.12.2 terminal emulator Kwrite 21.12.2 text editor LibreOffice 7.3.0.3 office suite MPV 0.34.1 media player Octopi 0.13 software manager Okular 21.12.2 PDF viewer Quassel 0.14.0 IRC client SimpleScreenRecorder 0.4.3 screen video recorder Spectacle 21.12.2 screenshot utility Vim 8.2.4227 text editor
As long as that list is, it has some oddities. For instance, it has three different text editors but no bittorrent client, although Transmission-Qt is in the repositories if needed.
The default web browser is Falkon, in its current 3.2.0 version, which dates to 31 January 2022. Falkon is a browser with good potential and one of the few Qt-based ones available right now, but it has some drawbacks. Notably it has few extensions and can be a bit of a RAM hog. A bigger concern is that version 3.2.0 is the first release in almost three years and Falkon was starting to look like “abandonware” there for a while. Web browsers are sensitive to security issues and most get updated every four to six weeks. Falkon otherwise works well and has a nice interface, it just needs a dedicated development team to provide it with more regular attention.
The KaOS developers do acknowledge the shortcomings of Falkon and so the Croeso software store and the Octopi software manager (which is similar to the GTK Synaptic) offer some alternate GTK-toolkit browsers, including Firefox, Chrome, and Opera, plus the Qt-based Otter Browser.
The release notes for the 2022.02 download indicate that this is the first time Wayland has been offered by default. Quite a number of accommodations were required to switch from the X display server to Wayland. All the bugs are not quite resolved and, when you open SimpleScreenRecorder, for instance, you are warned that it doesn't support Wayland, only X.org.
Of interest, LibreOffice is supplied complete, including the LibreOffice Base database application that many Linux distributions omit, due to being rarely used. I suspect that just providing LibreOffice complete simplifies package administration, more than fitting a particular user case.
Even though there are a limited number of packages provided, the use of the Pacman package manager allows users to compile their own packages to fill in any needs.
Conclusions
Overall, the approach of using a single toolkit, desktop, and architecture, seems to work well for this distribution, giving it a sharp focus. Not having to make a lot of compromises to provide software that is not a good fit, or that causes packaging issues, also contributes and cuts down the support requirements by limiting the number of software packages. The end result is a precise and elegant distribution.
If you are looking to get a smart Linux distribution that puts you in control, then KaOS is definitely worth a closer look.
External links
Official website: https://kaosx.us/