First, minimal test ISO is uploaded for the September 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. Again, major changes to the installer Calamares will need to be thoroughly tested.

This ISO will feature Qt 5.13.0 or 5.13.1, Plasma 5.16.4, the Linux kernel 5.2.xx, Nettle 3.5.1, Libevent 2.1.11, Glib2 2.60.6 among the many updates. Non-free installs feature a different presentation of the License page, help is needed to test this with newer Nvidia cards using the 430 series drivers.

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 5.61.0, KDE Applications 19.08.0, Plasma 5.16.4 and Linux 5.2.1x 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 3.2.13 Release Notes page is only partially updated.

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-2019.08.27-x86_64.iso
sha256sum:

e65b89b72142e62fcb786a391f2f39dc35ced9028c05e99e83fd5c3e72901a13  KaOS-2019.08.27-x86_64.iso

On this ISO you will find:
Linux 5.2.10
systemd 242
gcc 8.3.0
Qt 5.13.0
Frameworks 5.61.0
Plasma 5.16.4
KDE Applications 19.08.0
Calamares 3.2.13
Octopi 0.9.0 with sysinfo & cachecleaner tool

Known issues:

  • Welcome page links in Calamares cannot open Falkon, QtWebengine no longer allows the root user to run sandboxed. This is known in Calamres upstream, work will start to no longer need to run Calamares as the root user, but won't be fixed in time for this ISO. Workarounds will be tried.

Second (and most probably last) minimal ISO is uploading. A few issues fixed since first minimal, gone is Falkon not opening on clicking links in Calamares and Dolphin sidebar now fits all icons.
A lot has been updated too since first minimal, kernel is now at 5.2.11, major change in Nvidia 435 (now supports PRIME), new squashfs-tools, phonon packages, opencv, libusb, CVE fix libgcrypt among those.

Especially new Nvidia 435 needs testers, hopefully eqlucky is around to help.....

https://sourceforge.net/projects/kaos-test/files/iso/KaOS-2019.08.31-x86_64.iso
sha256sum:

81e3a11a40c9b5f7f64d98c3dcf9d216d34b6145a7ffde18132345e368e974b3

Hey!
I can finally boot KaOS again thanks to a BIOS update.

Hardware:

  • Lenovo Thinkpad E485 (AMD Raven Ridge)
  • Samsung SSD 960 Evo
  • Samsung SSD SM981/PM981/PM983 (not sure which - the OEM version of 960 Evo)

The basic installation (delete disk) works, manually creating various partitions using BTRFS or XFS works too.

I have problems with LUKS however. No matter which of the above SSDs I install (both are NVMe disks) the cryptsetup fails at the beginning. The size of the swap partition doesn't matter and I partitioned via the delete disk option. I tried to upgrade the firmware on the 960 Evo but that did not work out. The second Samsung SSD has the most recent firmware installed. Interestingly the encryption fails with the last released (june) ISO of KaOS too, an earlier KaOS release did not (I believe it was the February release). The installation logs:
- With SM981/PM981/PM983
- Evo 960 without hibernate
- Evo 960 with hibernate

Other findings:

  • Once manual partitioning was used in Calamares no other partitioning scheme (e.g. delete disk) can be chosen. I had to restart to fix this. Or is there another way to clear Calamares' "cache"?

  • Calamares did not like being closed and opened a second time. Calamares almost always segfaulted afterwards.

  • Calamares does not warn you about weak passwords - this is probably known though?

  • Calamares tells you about the need for 512MiB sized /boot partitions on UEFI installations but does not warn you if you create a non-Fat32 /boot partition. I created 2 512MiB sized partitions. Both had the boot flags set and just one was fat32, the other was XFS. I selected the XFS partition for /boot => the installer finished with nasty Python errors.

  • I can only choose the predefined mountpoints - no custom ones seem to be possible? Or is this intended?

  • demm replied to this.

    AnKosteck
    Thanks for helping, I'll try to reproduce LUKS errors with a test install, though have not found any issues with that in June ISO, so might be nvme or BTRFS related.
    EDIT:
    I can duplicate cryptsetup error, so work on fixing that can now be done by working on local installs.
    EDIT2:
    Seems not much I can do about it, reported for quite a while now upstream, no fix yet:
    https://github.com/calamares/calamares/issues/1163

    I tried to upgrade the firmware on the 960 Evo
    That shouldn't be needed, kernel includes latest microcodes (KaOS builds those into the kernel) and linux-firmware is the very latest on that ISO.

    AnKosteck Calamares does not warn you about weak passwords - this is probably known though?

    That was voted upon by the KaOS community about 18 months ago, when password quality as introduced upstream (Calamares), it was voted not to use it.

    AnKosteck Calamares tells you about the need for 512MiB sized /boot partitions on UEFI installations but does not warn you if you create a non-Fat32 /boot partition.

    Manual is completely up to you, there just is a warning, stating what is needed to boot for UEFI, but you are free not to use a boot partition (and use one from another install for example). More then warning will not be done, manual is intended for those who know what they are doing, automated won't allow you to make such mistakes (using boot in UEFI, without FAT).

    AnKosteck I can only choose the predefined mountpoints - no custom ones seem to be possible? Or is this intended?

    You mean in manual? That is intended. Which ones are you missing?

              No issues so far with nvidia, it works with noveau and PRIME; both with live session and from hard drive.
              I'll try the propietary drivers later.

              demm EDIT2:
              Seems not much I can do about it, reported for quite a while now upstream, no fix yet:
              https://github.com/calamares/calamares/issues/1163

              Well, I will go the manual route then.

              demm You mean in manual? That is intended. Which ones are you missing?

              It's not the case that I am missing some. Just when I was trying out the manual partitioning I went ahead and tried to create a /boot/efi partition. I noticed only after the installation errors popped up that custom paths are ignored. This is not really an issue for me I just wanted to point that out.

              • demm replied to this.

                    One more issue found for LUKS encryption, kbd needed patching to have the keyboard working on trying to enter the passphrase, so from this ISO, you cannot successfully boot into a LUKS encrypted system, since key strokes are not recognized.

                    AnKosteck I went ahead and tried to create a /boot/efi partition

                    Good thing that option is not possible, won't work in KaOS, systemd-boot uses /boot

                      Ok, it stills doesn't boot into SDDM right after rebooting into propietary drivers, so my workaround is due to be able to boot into the desktop.
                      It works as expected. I'll wait for Xorg upgrade to give PRIME a try on propietary.

                      @eqlucky please join in IRC, not clear at all if nvidia 345 no longer works, or if this is an ongoing issue for non-free & hybrid.

                      First full ISO is up. LUKS passphrase not working due to kbd is fixed. Yesterday's tagging/release of KDE Apps 19.08.1 & Plasma 5.16.5 is included.
                      Nvidia 435.21 is stil in use, though that might cause this not being the final ISO, no reports yet if Nvidia is working at all (340xx & 390xx are fine). It might be needed to go back to Nvidia 430, if no positive reports come in for booting into Live with non-free & newer Nvidia cards.
                      All KaOS apps now have the latest translations, release notes are up to date, so all the rest is in place for this being the final ISO.

                      SHA256sum:

                      62f486290caffb3fa8a79776312a7b2fb9c8299aa97d0d040c825eee939bff84  KaOS-2019.09.04-x86_64.iso

                      https://sourceforge.net/projects/kaos-test/files/iso/KaOS-2019.09.04-x86_64.iso

                      I hope September ISO will be the best KDE distro that is out there. If you don't mind, I have a great idea how to beat the hell out of Manjaro KDE and surpass them on distrowatch. As a maintainer of a few boxes, I have experience with maintaining them and improving speed, reliability and visuals that people envy (!).

                      I. Improve responsiveness and speed of KaOS by applying Linaro patches to the kernel, or create udev rules for the system to use appropriate I/O scheduler depending on the type of hard drive: BFQ for spinning drives, mq-deadline for SSDs.
                      Real life experiences:
                      a) Manjaro uses Linaro patches and uses original Linaro BFQ scheduler. Mainline kernel (starting from 5.2.x) uses BFQ-mq (using confusingly BFQ name for BFQ-mq😉.
                      b) My Arch box with openRC (old computer) uses udev rules I created and the results are amazing.
                      c) The big daddy of distros- Fedora uses mq-deadline. By my tests GIMP starts significantly faster.

                      I have never experienced any trouble with BFQ or udev rules or Linaro patched kernel. Its extremely robust and is adequate for September release. The I/O scheduler was always a bottleneck in Linux. Now we have reliable and tested solution. Just apply the either solution.

                      Scientific proof by Italian professor:
                      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7j1AqTZKG4

                      II. Improve greatly fonts to surpass anything that is currently available by any distro including Ubuntu (!).
                      Please let me explain how I did achieve it on the aforementioned Arch box:

                      1. $  xrdb -query | grep Xft

                      --> should be: antialias: true, autohint: false, dpi: 96, hinting: true, hintstyle: hintslight, lcdfilter: lcddefault, rgba: rgb

                      2. $ cat /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/xft-settings.sh

                      --> should be: antialias: 1, autohint: 0, dpi: 96, hinting: 1, hintstyle: hintslight, lcdfilter: lcddefault, rgba: rgb

                      $ echo "$XFT_SETTINGS" | xrdb -merge > /dev/null 2>&1

                      3. Just to be sure in home folder create a "dotfile":

                      $ cat .Xresources ---> all Xft.dpi/antialias/hinting/hintstyle.... as above

                      4. Now for the fun part, you need 3 packages and appropriate setting (without seettings in WILL NOT WORK!):

                      $ git clone https://github.com/pdeljanov
/infinality-remix.git
-----------------------------------------------
$ cd infinality-remix/freetype2-infinality-
remix
$ makepkg -sci
===============================
$ cd ../fontconfig-infinality-remix
$ makepkg -sci
----------------------------------------------------
$cd ../cairo-infinality-remix
$ makepkg -sci

                      Set it exactly like this:
                      Location of settings: /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/infinality-settings.sh
                      Geany Screenshot Font Settings
                      https://pasteboard.co/IpiJykc.png
                      If you do not set it EXACTLY like this all will be for nothing.
                      In order to achieve the best results with fonts pleas adjust your dpi (accordingly to your screen- everyone has different!).

                      III. 1. Set up a theme "breeze dark" --> dark panel and windows decorations + breeze (light) for the rest and clean up anything from the desktop.
                      Nothing on The Desktop - Clean Look
                      https://pasteboard.co/IpilJ5A.png
                      https://pasteboard.co/IvRAiCC.png
                      2. Unlock panel, click on the desktop and change from "desktop folder" to "desktop" - it should clean the desktop.
                      3. Put the panel on the bottom (default, don't change)
                      4. Use default (don't change, application switching)
                      5. Change clock to 24hrs by default
                      6. Right click on the panel and use "show only apps from the current desktop" (old work-spaces paradigm, so new desktop/workspace is empty).
                      7. Do not add any bookmarks to Firefox. People hate this when Firefox starts with "the crap" [they want their youtubes and facebooks!! - yeah I know!]. The user decides their bookmarks. Firefox starts with nothing: empty tab.

                      IV. To fully utilize KDE capabilities pleas install whole KDE suite including KDE PiM. Its more powerfull and suits much better KaOS philosophy of using KDE and qt. Thunderberd is for kids. KDE PiM has very powerfull email client KMail. Its a beast.

                      PS. Just for fun (for you to envy!):
                      https://pasteboard.co/IpizzkS.png
                      https://pasteboard.co/IpizW5b.png
                      https://pasteboard.co/IpilJ5A.png
                      https://pasteboard.co/IpixccR.png
                      https://pasteboard.co/Ipiy2JP.png
                      https://pasteboard.co/IpiyvU1.png

                      • demm replied to this.

                        As certain Steve said: there's one more thing...

                        V. The new version of GRUB can utilize f2fs file system. Its faster than fat32 and designed with flash storage in mind. Since we want fast and robust, it would rock (remember, we're trying to surpass Manjaro ! and they know their stuff!!!) if the .ISO was created with f2fs and lesser compression for the iso. Everyone would wander: how the hell did they make KDE so fast, hahaha!!!!

                        • demm replied to this.

                          I alwasy forget stuff (sorry I am not rying to spam!): I looked at Intel's Clear Linux and as gstreamer-vaapi has an interesting dependancy of "gmm" library. This is for managing Intel's GPU memory. Please have it as default dependancy. (Manjaro doesn't have it, hahaha). But this Clear Linux is optimized. And now you know!

                          improverator beat the hell out of Manjaro KDE and surpass them on distrowatch

                          KaOS will never be a popular distro, see the goals on the home page, it is far too limited for many users (just 2000-2200 packages, only one option is Plasma, no other desktop environments available and so on)

                          improverator and is adequate for September release

                          New ISO is just days away, any such kernel changes most certainly will need thorough testing ( as in weeks/months).

                          improverator Improve greatly fonts

                          What is shipped now is all upstream defaults, it has been considered many times since 2013 to use complete different settings, but is what works for one, not completely inadequate for someone else? KDE font settings make it quite easy to adjust.

                          Midna theme will certainly not be changed in this ISO (nor will KaOS ever use a dark theme, see the consistent look over the last 6+ years KaOS has kept).

                          improverator KDE PiM has very powerfull email client KMail

                          KaOS has never shipped an email client in default install, webmail works fine for live mode, for the install, let the user choose. That is also one of the reasons to use Falkon, light weight webbrowser, virtually nothing to add to the install, it uses all already in Plasma, then after the install, user can decide what is their preference (polls years ago here showed very equal preferences for Firefox/Chrome/Opera, so whatever big browser you add as default, 2/3 will want another one.

                          Do not add any bookmarks to Firefox

                          But have you actually tried a KaOS ISO? Then you would know those are complete GTK free, so no Firefox or Thunderbird, nor any bookmarks set.

                          improverator new version of GRUB

                          Almost no systems will use GRUB in KaOS, most are now UEFI, thus systemd-boot.

                          improverator we're trying to surpass Manjaro

                          No, KaOS has never had those kinds of goals

                          But thanks for all the feedback and ideas, maybe add to a better thread though then a topic about a test cycle (that is nearing the end).

                          PS: Please use code tags when posting code (enclose with 3 backticks ```), done for you this time.

                                      umatrix is not available for Falkon. I had to use live distro to post here without security against google scrips. Not good.

                                      The Sept 4 ISO will not be the final. This time not related to bugs on the ISO, but the shear amount of upstream updates which should be included in the upcoming release. For example Qt 5.13.1 & kernel 5.2.13 include some major fixes.
                                      Expect the final ISO to be up tomorrow.

                                      Second full ISO is up, this one includes new Qt 5.13.1 (and the roughly 100 rebuilds needed for new Qt) & linux 5.2.13 among the many updates since the first full ISO. When no new issues found, then this ISO will be released as the new stable Wednesday or Thursday.
                                      SHA256sum:

                                      9a96068153b81e4c80c0db25eefba6237a38f9d87f53c2aa26fd14ac00926f64  KaOS-2019.09.09-x86_64.iso

                                      https://sourceforge.net/projects/kaos-test/files/iso/KaOS-2019.09.09-x86_64.iso