The developers have been working very hard on the OS

Dec 27, 2014 14:32 GMT  ·  By

KaOS, a Linux distribution built from scratch that uses a modified KDE desktop environment and that follows a rolling release model, has reached version 2014.12 and is now ready for download.

KaOS is one of the few operating systems not actually based on something else. It's built from scratch and that has a number of advantages. Sure enough, it's a lot harder than using a base like Ubuntu or Fedora, but developers are not tied up to what the others are doing upstream. They decide what packages to implement and what versions to add, which gives them a lot of freedom.

To top things off, this is even a rolling release distro, which means that they don't really need to make periodical updates or releases. Everything is pushed through the regular upgrade process and you never have to do anything more than that.

On the other hand, it's a good thing to have an ISO image promoted from time to time, with all the trimming. It helps new users to get things going on the fly, without having to go through a long update process.

KaOS uses KDE by default

Besides building the OS from scratch, the developer also chose to modify the KDE desktop in order to provide a unique feeling and look. Very few teams go through the trouble of providing a custom desktop experience, so it's nice to see the extra work.

"This ISO marks two major milestones for this distribution. Since it’s inception almost two years ago, a need to be ready for UEFI installs has always been a priority. That was tied though to getting a modern Qt based installer that could handle such UEFI installs. With this ISO, both are implemented."

"The new, Qt5/python3 based installer is a joint effort of several distributions. In May of this year, developers of Netrunnner, KaOS and Manjaro got together to discuss the possibility to work jointly on a brand new, Qt5 based installer. This ISO is a first to have the split way of releasing from KDE. The applications are KDE Applications 14.12.0, bringing new features and bug fixes to more than a hundred applications. The base of KDE is more in a frozen state now, those are at 4.14.3, were the lts kde-workspace is at 4.11.14," said the devs.

Check the official announcement for more details about this release. You can download KaOS 2014.12 right now from Softpedia.

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