I saw ebuzz do a video on KaOS and was fascinated by the idea of a distro that isn't necessarily 'based' on anything. Also, I'm an avid lover of Plasma and thoroughly enjoyed the clean look out of the box, and was blown away by how little RAM it used in the review I watched.

All that being said, I hit a couple roadblocks during a live session that I'm wondering if a full install would fix.

  1. I didn't see any kind of a software center but figured out I could use pacman to install packages.. however, neofetch among many other things were not found. Flatpak wasn't enabled either. Does the list of available software grow after a full install?
  2. The OS couldn't find my laptop's speakers, despite being on a fairly new kernel. It's a 2021 Acer swift laptop, nothing extraordinary, and kernels as old as 5.15 had audio working out of the box. Could it be a missing hardware-related package?
  3. I didn't necessarily look into this, but how well does KaOS play with 32 bit packages? I remember trying (and failing) to get 32-bit wine working properly on slackware, so I'm curious if I'd run into the same issues.

Despite playing around with a variety of distros I've always fallen back on Ubuntu spins, so my questions may sound dumb to somebody more seasoned, just bear with me.

Hi @"elalbatross", many of your questions are answered on the KaOS website:
GUI for package management is Octopi:
https://kaosx.us/pages/gallery/ ( 3 videos)
Limited repositories:
https://kaosx.us/#repo
https://kaosx.us/docs/package

Online package viewer, so you can check all that is available:
https://kaosx.us/packages/
Screenfetch is available (similar to neofetch), or you can use inxi & hwinfo (the latter 2 are part of the default install).

Flatpak is not part of the default install, but is available:
https://kaosx.us/docs/flatpak/ (discover is in the repo's solely as a GUI for flatpak)

Regarding lib32:
https://kaosx.us/about/32bit/

For the sound issue, you are the second one mentioning this, so it would be good to figure what is going on. So far no logs or error messages from anyone to try and figure what the issue is. Help with this would be really appreciated, let me know if you can, and I will post some commands to get info.

    demm removed the tags .

    demm

    EDIT 3:: Putting this one up top because I fixed the issue with the sound. Unfortunately there's no way to fix it in the live image, but I installed KaOS onto an external HDD for giggles, removed the sof folders under /lib/firmware/intel/, and installed sof-bin-2.2 from here: https://github.com/thesofproject/sof-bin/releases/download/v2.2/sof-bin-v2.2.tar.gz (I probably could have used 2.2.2 but figured I'd just try an older version just in case.)

    TLDR; firmware issue. I needed to reboot to apply the changes. I'll leave my rambling below in case you feel the need to follow my train of thought.

    For anyone trying to follow along, commands below:
    sudo rm -r /lib/firmware/intel/sof*
    sudo ./Downloads/sof-bin-v2.2/install.sh v2.2

    Re- sound issues.

    I tested two laptops, my 2021 Acer swift, and my 2016 HP stream. I DO get sound on the HP, an older device. I also get sound on the current version of Pop_OS! on my Acer swift.

    Below are 3 pastebins- KaOS on the HP, KaOS on the Acer, and Pop_OS on the Acer. I ran $ inxi -Fxz and $ lspci.

    HP Stream - https://pastebin.com/sEBjTmDJ

    Acer Swift - KaOS (no sound) - https://pastebin.com/J0GVBrww

    Acer Swift - Pop_OS! - https://pastebin.com/zH4YhinT

    Thanks for answering my stupid questions about the other stuff! I understand and agree with the decisions made, just curious and exploring the distro 😃

    Edit:: I'm looking through the pastebins and really can't see a difference between Pop and KaOS when it comes to audio. Clearly both OS's see the hardware, yet for whatever reason KaOS isn't using it as an output. May be it's an issue with the audio server? I know nothing about pipewire and can barely figure out pulse so I don't think I could be too helpful there.

    Edit 2:: I booted back into the live USB for KaOS and actually bothered to read the errors that popped up. They are below:
    Starting version 251
    Mounted kdeosiso volume successfully.
    8.5980891C T2081 sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl 0000:00:1f.3: error: sof firmware file is missing, you might need to
    8.59815110
    T2081 sof-audio-pci-intel-tg1 0000:00:1.3:
    download it from https://github.com/thesofproject/sof-bin/
    8.5982151
    T2081 sof-audio-pci-intel-gl 0000:00:1.3: error: failed to load DSP firmware -2
    8.5986021
    T2083 sof-audio-pci-intel-tgi0800:00:1f.3: error: sof_probe_work failed err:
    -2
    9.71107530 T4191 Bluetooth: hci0: Malformed MST vendor event: B×82

    • demm replied to this.

        elalbatross removed the sof folders under /lib/firmware/intel/, and installed sof-bin-2.2 from here

        Really, never do this, you now mess up the database of the package manager (files that are part of the package are no longer there), always use the package manager to remove a package, in this case sof-firmware:
        https://github.com/KaOSx/main/blob/master/sof-firmware/PKGBUILD

        But, since you state you have it working with exactly the same files as are packaged in KaOS, it seems to be a packaging issue if the files are not found.
        Can you post where the install.sh script did install the sof files?

            demm

            "Can you post where the install.sh script did install the sof files? "

            It appears to have put them where the former files were - /lib/firmware/intel

            "always use the package manager to remove a package, in this case sof-firmware "

            I forgot to mention I did that too. Originally I thought it wasn't installed to begin with, so I tried installing that first. Unlike apt, pacman doesn't make it obvious that something is already installed (it says "reinstall", whereas apt just wont do anything), so I may have reinstalled it. I rebooted and still had no sound. After removing the package, those files were still there hence why I had to delete them (install.sh wouldn't run until the old files were moved/removed)

              install.sh does what the PKGBUILD linked above does (see the readme file in the same directory as the install.sh you downloaded, so no answer yet what is wrong with the package.
              Could you post the pacman log from removing sof-firmware, pacman not removing files from an installed package is not really possible. Log is /var/log/pacman.log

              For comparison, see the file listing of sof-firmware KaOS package:
              https://kaosx.us/packages/view.php?name=main/sof-firmware-2.2.2-1

                demm

                You're actually right about pacman. I just went and deleted the sof folders in /lib/firmware/intel and reinstalled the package via pacman (sof-firmware which is v2.2.2-1). I rebooted and had no sound again. I removed the package and the files went with it automatically, so I probably just got confused when I was messing with the files/install scripts to begin with.

                I DID go ahead and manually install the latest available on github (2.2.2) via install.sh, rebooted, and sound is working. https://github.com/thesofproject/sof-bin/releases/download/v2.2.2/sof-bin-v2.2.2.tar.gz

                All that being said, its very likely the sof-firmware package isn't working the way it should.

                Don't sweat me doing things that might break my system, I'm testing on an external drive for the sake of science in order to figure out the sound issue and get familiar with the OS.

                  The files are all exactly the same, so I wonder if the readme is wrong (it states, either use rsync & symlink, or copy all files), so, would be good to know if symlinking would fix.
                  Please test rebuild sof-firmware (after removing manually installed sof files):

                  sudo pacman -U http://kaosx.tk/repo/build/sof-firmware-2.2.2-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

                    demm

                    I’ll try that when I get back to my desk later this morning.

                    However, I DO know for sure symlinks are involved based on the feedback from install.sh, so if the package isn’t doing any symlinking then perhaps that’s the issue. I don’t have it in front of me now so I can’t paste any kind of output, but I’ll add another reply upon testing that command.

                      demm

                      Ok so I manually removed the sof files (sudo rm -r /lib/firmware/intel/sof*) and installed that package, rebooted, and sound is indeed working! Headphones work properly too.

                      Thanks for putting that together!

                      If the new version makes it into the next live image, let me know and I can test it.

                        Yes, rebuild will be on the next ISO (or updated version, should a new version be released). Rebuild will move to all users later today.