I have spent some time looking at independent Linux distributions – that means those that are built from scratch and not derived from one of the larger, generally better-known distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, etc.), such as Solus, which I wrote about earlier. This time I am going to look at KaOS Linux.
The default web browser is Falkon, which is a continuing development of what used to be called QupZilla. This fits with both the KDE/Qt-focus and Lean objectives of KaOS, as it is built on the QtWebEngine rendering engine. If you need/want a more familiar browser, you can install Firefox, Chrome or Opera from the repositories (installing any of these will also bring along the GTK libraries and utilities). Oh, and by the way, just a small rant on the side… after installing Google Chrome, the first thing it asks is whether you want to automatically send usage stats to Google. Yeah, right, that’s exactly what I want to do… not.
LibreOffice is included in the base distribution, but in accordance with the “Lean Distribution” philosophy the installer makes it easy to omit it from the installation, and you may choose to install KDE Calligra Suite instead.
Getting KaOS
The ISO Live image is available on the KaOS Download page. Note the singular syntax there, there is only one download, that being the latest Live ISO image with the latest build of the KDE Plasma desktop, for x86_64 architecture, approximately 2.4GB. The SHA256 checksum of the image is also given on that page, so as always be sure to verify this before using it. Once you have done that, copy the ISO image to a USB stick or burn to a DVD, boot that and you will be running KaOS Live:
Once you are satisfied that KaOS is working properly on your system and you want to install it, just click the “Install KaOS” button in the Welcome panel. That will launch the calamares installer. In the Welcome screen shot shown, you can see that calamares has already determined that I am located in Switzerland, and is showing this initial screen in German, and offering German as the installation language (sometimes the installer can be a bit over-zealous). In fact, while it is gathering information and preparing for installation, the Next button will not be active, so you can’t continue until the installer is ready.
The Keyboard screen is the one that I found the most confusing in this installation – but that is only because I don’t use a US keyboard, so I needed to change the layout. There is no place on this screen to select the layout, and I had gotten almost to the end of the installation when I realized that I still hadn’t set it. I had to go back through all of the screens looking for that option before I found that you have to click on the keyboard model to get to the layout selection – even if the default model it is showing is correct.
The Partitions screen is very typical of most Linux installers today – choose between installing alongside the existing contents, replacing an existing partition, using the entire disk (thus erasing everything currently on the disk), or manual partitioning so you can create your own partition table.
One small comment about bootloader installation/configuration. KaOS uses the systemd bootloader, similar to what I described in the previous post about Solus, but at least in the Manual Partitioning screen it allows you to simply select the ESP partition you want to use, rather than requiring to you fiddle around with the boot and esp partition flags to trick it into using anything other than the first ESP partition. Be aware, though, that it mounts the ESP partition on /boot (most other distributions mount it on /boot/efi).
While I’m on the “Manual Partitioning” option, I should mention that I have been having a discussion for the past few days which has made it clear to me that some additional information about how I handle this might be generally helpful. I use Manual Partitioning on pretty much every Linux system that I install. The reason for this is fairly simple – I prefer to do the partitioning before I go into the installer, so that I can think it through carefully, and make sure that I have everything right before I start. In addition, I find the partitioners included in many Linux installers to be less clear and less flexible than the partitioning tools that I normally use (gparted). It is possible to do the partitioning in the installer, but I strongly recommend separating this complex task from the actual installation process.
The Summary screen shows everything that you have entered, and everything that will be done to install KaOS Linux on your system. Read through this carefully, and make sure it is all correct. When you are satisfied with it, click Install.
