KaOS 2013.12 ISO released with KDE 4.12.0

Dec 19, 2013

Late October work started to get a first pre-build for KDE 4.12 up (beta1 at that time). Since then five full versions of this new major release have been built and well tested, so with the announcement today of KDE releasing 4.12, KaOS is ready and happy to present you with a new stable ISO including this version. Some highlights of this release are substantial improvements in the KDE PIM stack, giving much better performance and many new features. Kate streamlined the integration of Python plugins and added initial Vim-macro support.

All current stable KaOS users, as always, there is no need to reinstall, KDE 4.12.0 will be available with your next pacman -Syu. Please see the forum post regarding this update.

KDE is not the only bigger news on this ISO, the new kernel, linux 3.12.5, comes with major improvements for hybrid graphics cards. Switching the discrete card on and off is now handled at kernel level, leading to considerable power savings.

The Installer has had a complete overhaul for its look and is now fully integrated with the Kotonaru theme used in this distribution.
It handles localization packages for Calligra too with this release, all available language packs for Calligra are included in this ISO. Correct localization of home directories is added.
Thanks to the translators Dagodex, Cellix, DrumBE, ShalokShalom, and Forerunner, the Installer is available in five more languages.

A few applications running on Qt5 are included in this ISO. With the release of Qt 5.2.0 some noticeable improvements were added. Checkout applications like Hotot, Flickrview or SameGame to see the smoothness of QML and Qt5.

To improve security of every KaOS install the firewall is enabled by default and login requires a password, unless you disable this feature during the install.

For those looking for some help during the install, the installation guide is available in both English and Spanish, thanks to the translation of Dago.

Since the last ISO six weeks ago, the repositories have seen hundreds of updates, as to be expected with a rolling release. A new xorg stack with mesa 10.0.1, xorg-server 1.14.5 is included. Glib2 is at 2.38.2 and all that depend on it updated to their latest. Networkmanager 0.9.8.8, Calligra 2.7.5, Clementine 1.2.1, Plasma-nm 0.9.3.2, Octopi 0.3.1 are part of the default install.

The repositories have grown to a good nineteen hundred, users had requested some interesting additions, among those added are scilab, dolphin-emu, nfs-utils, keepassx, scala, jdownloader, dfc and lyx.

For further info about the ISO please see the release notes