Intro

Moving away from proprietary Operating Systems to open source options (Linux-based, BSD based, Solaris based) is about wanting freedom and choice in almost all cases. But should any such Operating System or Distribution not make some choices of what it believes is the best fit? KaOS sees a lack of focus in that respect. To create the highest quality Distribution possible, there needs to be a focus to make sure the user gets the best possible for whatever choice they made. It simply is not possible to package any and all to work perfect for every Desktop Environment or Toolkit.

Choices

KaOS has made the choice to use the Linux kernel as a base (though the Illumos kernel is under constant evaluation, and a future switch is a wish). After that choice, the best available package manager, most flexible way of package building, repository maintenance is pacman/makepkg for a rolling distro like KaOS. As for the Desktop Environment, there will never be a change, whether it is Linux or Illumos based, KDE Plasma will be the choice, Qt the Toolkit. With those choices in place, April 2013 package building for this independent distribution was started. KaOS is a build from scratch distribution, every package in every repository is build by and for KaOS. By July 2013 the initial goal of about 1500 packages was reached.