First, minimal test ISO is uploaded for the December stable ISO release

provide the installation log, if you encounter any issue at all

As always, early test ISOs are minimal, very few apps, just a web-browser, file manager, text editor, GUI package manager. The non-free nvidia drivers are included since they are a big part of what needs testing. Help is especially needed with testing non-free nvidia for the 415 series. So far no such new card is available in the usually used test systems.

This ISO will feature Openssl 1.1.1, gcc 7.4.0, perl 5.28.1, Qt 5.12.0, KDE Apps 18.12.0 among the many updates. Added is a proper bootloader entry for BTRFS filesystems.

KaOS ISOs are not only GTK free but are Qt4 & KDE 4 free too.
This is as pure a Qt 5/Plasma 5 ISO as possible.

Plan is to have Frameworks 5.53.0, KDE Applications 18.12.0, Plasma 5.14.4 and Linux 4.19.xx on the final ISO. If all testing goes well expect the final ISO to be released within a week to ten days

Calamares version used is 3.2.3 Release Notes page is not fully updated yet, you will see some the text from the October ISO.

The ISO is using packages from the build repo, but that repo is not enabled, so if you decide to install, make sure to add the build epo to your pacman.conf.

To help with testing:

  • Use a GPT partition table on BIOS system (manual partitioning)
  • Use Isowriter to write the test ISO to your USB stick, plan is to remove imagewriter from the repos after this test cycle
  • Use in live mode on as much different hardware as possible
  • If you have an UEFI capable system, check if the ISO boots in both UEFI and legacy BIOS mode, make sure though to turn off secure boot
  • test installs on real hardware are needed, not just vbox
  • check as many partitioning options as possible in the partitioning of Calamares, see if all works and is clear enough
  • test with the BTRFS filesystem, it should now work properly without any intervention on UEFI systems (systemd-bootloader).

debug packages for Calamares are part of all ISOs, run Calamares with gdb if you encounter errors
provide the installation log, if you encounter any issue at all

You can start Calamares from the Welcome app, or run it with:

sudo calamares -d

The install log will be created in the home directory of the Live user, see ~/installation.log. It is available after the install in the target system in /var/log/installation.log
If run from cli, make sure to pastebin the full output, since no installation.log will be copied then, though that log is more complete.

The site for testing ISOs in use:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/kaos-test/files/iso/
https://sourceforge.net/projects/kaos-test/files/iso/KaOS-2018.12.14-x86_64.iso
sha256sum:

cb737003632303f7f7dc6bd1b5d62f6d8bd03b94db916d670dc8cb54dbf154ed  KaOS-2018.12.14-x86_64.iso

On this ISO you will find:
Linux 4.19.9
systemd 239
gcc 7.4.0
Qt 5.12.0
Frameworks 5.53.0
Plasma 5.14.4
KDE Applications 18.12.0
Calamares 3.2.3
Octopi 0.9.0 with sysinfo & cachecleaner tool

Known issues:

  • Systems with an nvidia graphics card, using the free nouveau driver will have to switch to XRender once booted, system is unusable with OpenGl

Since nobody else replied (like in previous test cycles), this time tested installing to an external disk in uefi without bootloader or $esp. Works fine. Installation is fast and installed OS (as usual) very fast.

One question. You have asked (in all test cycles) to

Use a GPT partition table on BIOS system (manual partitioning)

I do not test this as I have quite a lot of OS's in each disk (my uefi disks are gpt and my bios-legacy disks are msdos). Are you saying the installer will automatically set up a bios_grub partition and flag it (as bios_grub) ? Or is there more to it?

Cheers.

  • demm replied to this.

    gohlip Are you saying the installer will automatically set up a bios_grub partition and flag it (as bios_grub) ?

    No, just like for the question regarding testing BTRFS, this needs to be done with the manual option, where you have to setup with unformatted space and adding the bios_grub boot flag. Once that is done though, the installer does all the needed correctly. This testing question can actually go, since it has been tested a long time now and works flawlessly.

      Thanks for the reply. Clear now for me.
      But my partitions are always ready before any OS installation.
      To repeat, KaOS test cycles are always (at least the last 4 or 5) 'good'.
      Let's see. Tested in bios-legacy, tested in uefi, tested in uefi grub 2., tested without bootloader.
      Always the fastest kde, even with baloo enabled.
      Almost boring (good thing) without incidence.
      Thanks.

      Correction, not unformatted space, but unformatted partition is needed.
      Glad to hear all your tests were good too, same here except for the nouveau/opengl issue, but that seems known know and is Qt 5.12 related, not distro specific.

      Second minimal (should be last minimal) ISO is up. No major bugs found so far, just one correction to add the locale edit explanation to the virtualbox UEFI boot menu.
      Major updates though to Clang/LLVM (7.0.1) and Mesa (18.3.1).
      For the rest, just a lot of updates, so one more minimal is needed.

      Some of the updates:

      • linux 4.19.10
      • mesa 18.3.1
      • LLVM/clang 7.0.1
      • git 2.20.1
      • e2fsprogs 1.44.5
      • wacomtablet 3.1.1
      • nvidia 415.25
      • libinput 1.12.4

      https://sourceforge.net/projects/kaos-test/files/iso/KaOS-2018.12.18-x86_64.iso

      Sha256susm:

      f66683acef3346318debed6166d2b67f736f86906d7fbbc0de9ac5ee99b7b47d  KaOS-2018.12.18-x86_64.iso

      I bought an secondary ssd disk, I can try installing the this test iso.

      I have one question, can I upgrade the installed test system to the full ISO (is there a list of packages not included?)

      First full ISO is uploaded, the issue with nouveau is resolved by using the much more modern modesetting (in-kernel) driver instead of xf86-video-nouveau. Release notes in Calamares are now also complete.
      Among the updates since the last minimal ISO:

      • linux 4.19.12
      • grep 3.3
      • sed 4.7
      • bison 3.2.3
      • samba 4.9.4
      • lmdb 0.9.23
      • harfbuzz 2.3.0
      • imagemagick 6.9.10.19
      • opencv 3.4.5

      https://sourceforge.net/projects/kaos-test/files/iso/KaOS-2018.23.18-x86_64.iso

      Sha256sum:

      2412f81a82b9b5ebcc38151a53a41e1859767629d51ea50f912ab4f15a878a53  KaOS-2018.12.23-x86_64.iso
      5 days later