KaOS Linux, historically known for its absolute fidelity to the KDE/Plasma environment for more than a decade, has published its ISO 2026.03 image taking giant steps towards a clear and ambitious goal: to completely eradicate systemd from their code.
Following the surprise announcement in February (where Plasma was abandoned in favor of composer Wayland NiriThis March issue focuses on dismantling the inner workings of the init system. For open-source purists seeking lightweight, modular alternatives to systemd's monopoly, This update marks a change in the development of KaOS on their path towards adopting the Dinit startup system.
Dracut and Limine replace the heart of systemd
The most critical change under the hood of KaOS 2026.03 is the permanent removal of the systemd-boot boot manager y from the creation script mkinitcpio (which depends entirely on systemd). Instead, The team has implemented Dracut for the generation of the initramfs (the initial temporary file system).
The developers confessed that this transition was a three-year project, requiring the creation of a custom live overlay module for Dracut. This module is responsible for managing the layered configuration that KaOS needs to function in its "Live USB" mode before installation.
Parallel, The Calamares graphical installer has removed systemd-boot from its options.This crowns the modern Limine 11.1 as the default boot manager for both the live session and new installations. Having overcome these significant hurdles, the development team has confirmed they are now free to begin the technical migration to Dinit.
Niri and Noctalia: The new face on Qt6 and Wayland
On a visual level, KaOS 2026.03 consolidates the abandonment of KDE PlasmaHowever, it maintains its philosophy of being a distribution focused exclusively on Qt libraries. The default environment is now a keyboard-oriented combination:
- Niri 25.11: A Wayland "scrollable tiling" compositor that arranges the windows in a continuous strip.
- Noctalia 4.7 and Noctalia Shell 0.0.10: Built directly on Qt 6.11, they offer a lightweight desktop environment that replaces the heavy reliance on Plasma modules that were anchored to systemd.
To adapt the system to this new change without losing functionality, Specific tools have been integrated for WaylandThe outdated Konsole (which crashed without Plasma) has been replaced by Kitty, a modern, hardware-accelerated terminal emulator using OpenGL. Btop for advanced system resource monitoring and Starship for customizing the terminal prompt have also been included.
This whole set is powered by the recent Linux Kernel 6.19.10 and is based on Mesa 26.0.3, guaranteeing next-generation performance for graphics applications.
Calamari is ready for pure Wayland and limited VirtualBox.
The adaptation work has also reached the installation process. The Calamares graphical installer has been patched in its QML modules to function natively in a pure Wayland environment, restoring critical capabilities such as text input during user creation. Furthermore, It continues to offer automated partitioning supporting the XFS, EXT4, BTRFS and ZFS file systems (whose module was updated to version 2.4.1).
However, The developers have issued a warning. for those who wish to test the ISO in virtual machines. Because VirtualBox does not yet offer real support for Wayland (still anchored to X11), KaOS will not boot unless the user strictly configures the graphics adapter as VMSVGA and enables 3D acceleration via the command line.
First of all, those wishing to use KaOS in VirtualBox should be aware that VirtualBox does not yet support Wayland; it remains an X11-only application. The only workaround is to use 3D in the settings. Furthermore, VBoxVGA (also X11-only) cannot be used for the display; you will need to use VMSVGA and configure the 3D option in the VBoxManage modifyvm command line. –accelerate3d on. If this isn't possible, don't try to use KaOS in VirtualBox, as it won't boot. You'll have to wait until VirtualBox supports Wayland.
Finally, the daily-use software stack has been updated to its latest versions, including Firefox 149, Thunderbird 149, LibreOffice 26.2.2, and the KDE Gear suite 25.12.3.
If you are interested in knowing more about it, you can consult the details In the following link.
Download KaOS 2026.03
If you do not yet have KaOS installed on your computer and you want to download and install this Linux distribution focused on the KDE desktop environment on your computer or you want to try it under a virtual machine. You just have to go to the official website of the distribution and in its download section you can get the system image. The link is this.
You can save the downloaded image to a USB device with the help of the Etcher application.
Si you are already a KaOS user, you must have received these updates in the last few days. But if you don't know if you already have them installed, just open a terminal and run the following commands in it:
sudo pacman -Syu
With this, you only have to accept the updates if they exist and I recommend restarting your computer.