Hello! After an absence I was glad to try KaOS once more when I discovered this new version (2016.04). I installed it on my relatively newer laptop last week. Here is my pacman log for details of my computer.

https://gist.github.com/e4b543f6c3a7c2a801bc04aa62486480

Stuff I'm impressed with the most:

  1. The pacman log link. Clever way to get pc info (Octopi>Tools>Sys info)
  2. Much more organized website. I like that I can browse for packages very easily. I wanted to make sure that apps important to me were also in the repositories, i.e., smplayer, vlc, gimp, dropbbox, chrome, libreoffice, youtube-dl, intel-microcode and libva.
  3. I like the look and feel of the desktop. The colors and theme are simply high quality.
  4. Youtube videos play without tearing after a simple adjustment in the display compositor. The same goes for vlc and smplayer.
  5. Well thought out, intuitive installer. No problem dual booting with Windows 10.

Issues I encountered and workarounds.

  1. During installation, the installer returned an error, something like "can't make a filesystem" on the target partition with existing OS even if "format" was checked. After several attempts, it successfully installed when I first deleted the target partition.
  2. After the first update (~770MB of packages- I think this was for the 2016.06 version) the Bluetooth icon disappeared, and Bluetooth adapters went missing. I also get USB device descriptor read error during boot. These 2 issues disappeared when I reboot with a USB thumb drive inserted in a USB port. Strange, but it worked.

In fairness to the Devs, this Bluetooth icon disappearing was also an issue in my other KDE desktops before. I would install blueman as wokaround but blueman is not included in KaOS. Not a big deal. I don't intend to install any apps or package outside the official repositories. I don't want to mess up this well-oiled machine.

Beautiful distro. Video doesn't tear. Just what I want. Thank you!

Thanks for the feedback. Not clear why you installed the April ISO 🙂 ,but SysInfo will give a full installation log too.
Please paste the link SysInfo returns, maybe something is still left of what the install/format fail was. Though it would have been far more helpful if you would have gotten the log while in Live mode, right after the first format fail.....(log is in ~/installation.log in Live).

intel-microcode is no longer needed for you to install, that package is build into the kernel. All (early) Microcode updates are now fully automated.

The link above is already the Sysinfo result. My mistake, sorry about that. I thought the iso at Distrowatch was already the newest haha. The Sysinfo link has code that shows the part where I successfully installed the OS (starting line #1428). I think the lines before that explains what happened before, but I don't know how to interpret them. I made the USB installer using the dd command. Except for this, the Live system was practically flawless.

Excerpt from the contents of the link above. This is where I deleted the partitions. Installer went through without a hitch from here. Regards.

23:10:47 [0]: Starting job "Delete partition /dev/sda9." 
23:10:49 [0]: Starting job "Delete partition /dev/sda7." 
23:10:52 [0]: Starting job "Create new 97001MB partition on /dev/sda (ATA TOSHIBA MQ01ABD1) with file system xfs."

This is the section that could have been helpfull:

23:10:27 [1]: Writing to GlobalStorage["partitions"] 
23:10:27 [1]: "/dev/sda1" mtpoint: "" fs: "ntfs" "8EEEE5F3EEE5D40D" 
23:10:27 [1]: "/dev/sda2" mtpoint: "/boot" fs: "fat32" "94E8-AFEA" 
23:10:27 [1]: "/dev/sda3" mtpoint: "" fs: "unknown" "" 
23:10:27 [1]: "/dev/sda4" mtpoint: "" fs: "ntfs" "3A6C10576C10106D" 
23:10:27 [1]: "/dev/sda5" mtpoint: "" fs: "ntfs" "066272AD6272A15B" 
23:10:27 [1]: "/dev/sda6" mtpoint: "" fs: "ntfs" "728A9E268A9DE73F" 
23:10:27 [1]: "" mtpoint: "/" fs: "xfs" "" 
23:10:27 [1]: "" mtpoint: "" fs: "linuxswap" "" 
23:10:27 [1]: "/dev/sda10" mtpoint: "" fs: "ntfs" "DC94EC1094EBEACA" 
23:10:27 [1]: "/dev/sdb2" mtpoint: "" fs: "fat16" "F6F0-EA3C" 
23:10:27 [1]: "" mtpoint: "" fs: "unknown" ""

But sda7/sda8 are no longer there (new partitions created there instead now).
What option did you use to install? Manual (last option)?
Any change to list how that section was setup when it failed? ntfs? luks? lvm?

And for your video options, you do have a hybrid gfx card, but only use intel, thought about using PRIME? Bumblebee?
https://kaosx.us/docs/hybrid_gfx/

I can't remember the exact steps but I am sure I selected manual partitioning. The existing partitions were ext4 and swap. Both needed to be deleted and recreated before the installer proceeded. Thanks for the link for the hybrid graphics. At this time, I am satisfied with just Intel graphics in KaOS. I have NVidia + Intel graphics options available on the laptop's Windows 10 dual boot though.