KaOS 2022.01 a first ISO for 2022 come with three major changes:
- addition of a bootloader selection module. For UEFI installs it is now possible to select between systemd-boot, rEFInd, or no bootloader, all presented in a nice, QML based GUI.
- addition of an interactive keyboard preview in the keyboard setup page.
- porting of the License page to QML.
Updates of this distribution were numerous and they included a GCC 11.2/Binutils 2.73 based Toolchain (with a move to libxcrypt), complete updated libffi 3.4.2/Glib2 2.70.2 stack, ICU 70.1/Boost 1.77.0 stack, Python 3.9.9, Systemd 249.7, Curl 7.80.0, Mesa 21.3.3, Vulkan packages 1.2.203, Wayland 1.20.0, Sudo 1.9.8p2, and Openldap 2.6.0.
Qt 5.15 does not receive updates or maintenance from the Qt company (only closed source, paid support is available). KDE has stepped up though and published a maintained 5.15 fork. KaOS now does a monthly patch update from this fork for all of Qt 5.15, so it basically is now at 5.15.3.
Calamares received initial support for ZFS, and licensing issues should be no problem if the needed modules are not built into the kernel but distributed as separate modules instead, thus ZFS is added to the KaOS repositories. For now, the only kernel that supports ZFS is the linux-next kernel, since Dracut is fully supported by ZFS, anything mkinitcpio based needs to come from downstream.
For Nvidia, a new long-term support version is added to this ISO, 470xx. The move by Nvidia to 495 meant the end of support for Kepler-based cards, thus the need to add a new legacy version.
Qt 6.2.2 is included and is now far more complete since many more are ported from Qt5, this includes qt6-location and the big one, qt6-webengine (plus all the Qt6 webengine depends on). All of the PyQt packages are now available in a Qt6 version too. Plus the Kvantum theming has support for Qt6.
Highlights of KDE Gear 21.12 include Dolphin adding some clever features that allow you to locate and identify files and folders easily and quickly, and the option to choose a list or grid view for all apps, Spectacle has improved the look of the images as you drag and drop them from Spectacle’s preview panel to Dolphin to save them or to an online image storage site to share them, Kdenlive added the slip trimming mode or ripple trimming mode. Select a clip in the timeline and choose the Tool > Slip tool from the menu, click on a shortened version of your clip and drag it back and forth to place the exact portion of the clip between adjacent clips.
For the other KDE parts, the latest Frameworks (5.89.0) and Plasma 5.23.4 are included. All built on Qt 5.15.2+.
This ISO uses the CRC and finobt enabled XFS filesystem as default.
The artwork includes custom icon themes for light and dark themes. Midna and Midna Dark both create a complete unified look from boot-up all the way through logout.
Note: Installing on RAID is currently not possible