KaOS Linux has officially discontinued its default use of the KDE Plasma desktop environment in favor of the Niri Wayland compositor and the Noctalia desktop shell, marking a significant shift after 12 years of utilizing KDE. The new release, KaOS Linux 2026.02, is notable for adopting a scrollable-tiling compositor approach.
The decision to move away from KDE Plasma stems from compatibility issues with newer versions of the systemd init system, which has made it difficult for developers to create a functional ISO. The developers explained that the full support for a split /usr setup, which KaOS employs, is lacking in recent systemd updates. As a response, they are considering transitioning to the Dinit init system and dropping further reliance on Plasma, which heavily demands systemd functionality.
Despite this change, KDE applications remain available in the KaOS repositories for users who wish to continue using Plasma. The latest ISO does still ship with systemd as the default init system while providing a unique setup featuring Niri and Noctalia.
The KaOS team has expressed a commitment to a Qt-focused distribution, leveraging the latest Qt 6.10.2 framework, combined with options such as cliphist, seatd, ddcutil, pavucontrol-qt, and xwayland-satellite. This extensive setup aims for high performance and visual appeal.
As part of this transition, the distribution has also switched its default bootloader from systemd-boot to Limine. Under the hood, KaOS Linux 2026.02 is powered by the Linux kernel 6.18.10 LTS and includes the Mesa 25.3.5 graphics stack along with an updated toolchain.
Shifting to the new Niri and Noctalia desktop environment aims to gather user feedback for further enhancement of the distribution. Users can download KaOS Linux 2026.02 from the official website.