KaOS Review [2019.10 Release] Review Supplement: Installation

Nov. 29, 2019, 10 p.m.

KaOS offers a live environment that allows users to try the distribution before installation. The live environment includes the distribution agnostic installer, Calamares, which provides a quick, simple, and straightforward installation. This article describes the installation of KaOS as a supplement to the review of the 2019.10 release of the distribution.

Live Environment

The KaOS live environment is started from one of two systemd-boot options, the first for Free drivers, and the second for Non-Free drivers. As I mention in the review, the Non-Free option had no effect on the final installation, defaulting to an installation with the Free and Open Source graphics driver, Nouveau. This was no problem for my Acer V15 Nitro with an Nvidia GTX-960m graphics card, but the installation on my Dell G5 with a GTX-1050 Ti Mobile was not usable, as booting did not progress past the login screen, requiring the repair described in the review.

The live environment is an accurate representation of the default KaOS installation, showing the default theme and installed applications. It also has a well implemented welcome application specific to the live environment.

The KaOS 2019.10 Live Environment
The live environment features a welcome application with links to documentation, release notes, the usernames and passwords of the default and root users, something hard to find in some live environments.

(The installed system has the more full-featured Croeso welcome application, described in the review.)

Installation Steps

The actual installation with the Calamares installer, started from the live environment welcome application, was quick, straightforward, and generally trouble free, as is usually the case with Calamares. And as is always the case with Calamares, the partitioning screen doesn't show the partition labels, a feature that would be useful.

The only issue with the KaOS specific implementation of Calamares is that it doesn't allow mounting of the EFI System Partition at /boot/efi. Attempting to mount the ESP at this path results in an error upon advancing to the next screen after partitioning. This means that the kernel image, the initramfs image, and the fallback initramfs image are stored in the ESP instead of the on the installation's root partition at /boot. Related to this is that KaOS uses systemd-boot, which is not an issue when KaOS is the only distribution installed on the system that uses systemd-boot, but a real pain when it is not, as the distributions will overwrite the existing systemd-boot configuration each time they update.

The video below shows the installation on the Acer V15 Nitro as well as an overview of the software installed by default and the welcome application.

Installing KaOS 2019.10
  • Release Notes: 0:07
  • Start of installation: 1:08
  • Back to Release Notes: 3:13
  • Restart installation: 3:41
  • Live environment software overview: 8:42
  • Live environment welcome application: 10:02