First, minimal test ISO is uploaded for the October 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. New Systemd is the biggest hurdle so far in this test cycle, it has shown major bugs with Linux 5.3 on some hardware, but hard to replicate.
This is a very first ISO that is complete python2 free.

This ISO will feature Qt 5.13.1 or 5.13.3, Plasma 5.17.0, the Linux kernel 5.3.xx, GCC 9.2.0, Glibc 2.30, Glib2 2.62.1 and Systemd 243 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 435 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 5.63.0, KDE Applications 19.08.2, Plasma 5.17.x and Linux 5.3.x 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-2019.10.16-x86_64.iso
sha256sum:

ce1a142be73310b20f243f6ad6f353b665d87a21e2c8916debb77a12115a1cfa  KaOS-2019.10.16-x86_64.iso

On this ISO you will find:
Linux 5.3.6
systemd 243
gcc 9.2.0
Qt 5.13.1
Frameworks 5.63.0
Plasma 5.17.0
KDE Applications 19.08.2
Calamares 3.2.13
Octopi 0.9.0 with sysinfo & cachecleaner tool

Known issues:

  • ISO might not boot into a plasma session for some AMDGpu graphics cards, needs to be confirmed.
  • Non at this time

is it not poss to write the ISO to an SSD disk or SATA harddisk and boot that ? that works with other distros… it eats ure whole disk of course...

    6 days later

    First full ISO is uploaded. This full ISO is also python2 free, that means Seafile is left off from the full package list, only one from that list still needing python2.
    Changes since the previous ISO include Linux 5.3.7, Plasma 5.17.1, FFMPEG 4.2.1 (plus the needed rebuilds for it), Linux-firmware 20191022.
    Calamares release notes are updated to reflect all that has changed.
    There is a good change this will be the final ISO, we'll see what the next 1-2 days of testing will bring.
    SHA256sum:

    ee311d512bfaf0fc188faa2d97e68efe8602c6bfd21da1f98ecdd4eb32ad7a04  KaOS-2019.10.23-x86_64.iso

    https://sourceforge.net/projects/kaos-test/files/iso/KaOS-2019.10.23-x86_64.iso

    Testers have shown system is un-bootable for some older radeon hardware. This is a known issue for kernels 5.3.4 through 5.3.7, fix will be in (not yet released) 5.3.8, thus the above ISO will not be shipped as next stable, instead waiting for 5.3.8 to be released to create one more ISO.

    Linux 5.3.8 was released yesterday, all needed kernel modules have been rebuild, thus a new ISO could be created. That one is now up.
    Also updated are Plasma to 5.17.2, new Smplayer (fixed issues with MPV 3.0.0), new mesa, btrfs-progs, libreoffice, harfbuzz, librsvg among the many updates from last week.
    If nothing new is found, than this ISO will be released tomorrow as the next stable.
    SHA256sum:

    658f5eaf6bc11b9c43c2a17923d1b265961fc9b05dbdde1bddbcd02821578294  KaOS-2019.10.30-x86_64.iso

    https://sourceforge.net/projects/kaos-test/files/iso/KaOS-2019.10.30-x86_64.iso