KaOS Linux Sees First 2022 ISO Release with Initial ZFS Support, Latest KDE Goodies

KaOS Linux 2022

The KaOS Linux team are kicking off 2022 with a new ISO release of their independently developed GNU/Linux distribution inspired by Arch Linux and featuring the KDE Plasma desktop environment.

Still powered by the Linux 5.14 kernel series, which reached end of life about one and a half months ago, KaOS Linux 2022.01 is here with the latest KDE Plasma 5.23.4 desktop environment, which is accompanied by the latest KDE Frameworks 5.89 and KDE Gear 21.12 software suites.

KaOS Linux’s first 2022 ISO release also comes with the latest and greatest Calamares graphical installer (version 3.2.49.1), which received initial support for the ZFS file system. This implementation, along with the ZFS (Zettabyte File System) userspace utilities from the KaOS repositories, will allow you to use ZFS on KaOS Linux through the linux-next kernel.

“When KaOS started in 2013, there was some serious consideration to base this distro on Illumos. One of the biggest draws for Illumos was the ZFS filesystem,” explain the devs. “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.”

Another important change in the KaOS Linux 2022.01 release is the availability of the long-term supported, production Nvidia 470.xx proprietary graphics driver series. This replaces the new feature branch Nvidia 495.xx series, which dropped support for Kepler-based cards, so owners of these GPUs will receive a fair warning.

Under the hood, various core components have been updated. These include GCC 11.2, GNU Binutils 2.73, Glib2 2.70.2, ICU 70.1, Boost 1.77.0, Python 3.9.9, systemd 249.7, Mesa 21.3.3, Vulkan 1.2.203, Wayland 1.20.0, Sudo 1.9.8p2, cURL 7.80.0, OpenLDAP 2.6.0, libffi 3.4.2, as well as Qt 5.15.3 and Qt 6.2.2.

You can download KaOS Linux 2022.01 right now from the official website or by clicking the direct download link below if you’re in a hurry. Since KaOS Linux follows a rolling-release model, existing users need only to updated their installations by running the sudo pacman -Syu command in a terminal emulator.

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