With Frameworks 5.37.0 and Plasma 5.10.4.1 moving to all users yesterday, it is time to announce the many changes again. Last week KDE Applications 17.08RC became available for all KaOS users, expect 17.08.0 final to move to all users this coming Thursday.

Kernel moving to Hardened

The biggest change to announce is one that is being tested with the linux-next kernel. This kernel has moved to the hardened patch set, which provides an improved implementation of Address Space Layout Randomization for userspace processes. Linux-hardened started after grsecurity was no longer available as an open source option and is a supplement to upstream kernel hardening work by the Kernel Self Protection Project. See the Linux ASLR comparison{:target=“_blank”} for more information.

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Testing is going well, so expect the next stable kernel to move to hardened too. The plan is to have this happening in early September and with that, a new ISO will be released.

Updates in Theming/Default Look

As requested by KaOS users, the next ISO will also have a custom look for the bash prompt. This can be added to current installs too by installing powerline

The Midna Splashscreen was rewritten. It now uses a few QML effects, see the short demo:

New Additions to the Repositories

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It has been a few years, but finally there is an up to date (Qt5/kf5 based) firewall application available again. Nomad-firewall is available in the KaOS repositories

A second scan application is added. Kooka, just ported to kf5. This application has quite a few more options then skanlite, so it is nice to be able to add a second (Qt/kf5 based) option for scanning.

Testing has started for Krita 3.2, and with it the new option to use the G’MIC plugin. For that gmic-qt is added to the repo. With this, the options to add effects to any artwork/image are sheer endless.

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Repositories

Over the last five weeks a large part of the base of the system has been updated, this included Systemd 234, CMake 3.9, DBus 1.10.22, Git 2.14, E2fsprogs 1.43.5, Expat 2.2.3, XFSprogs and BTRFS-progs 4.12, hwids 20170715, Mesa 17.1.6, Udisks2 2.7.2, Gutenprint 5.2.13, Glew 2.1.0, all Texlive packages updated to 2017 and Libqalculate 1.0.0.

{% include image.html img=“img/2017/krita.png” title=“Krita 3.2RC with the G’MIC plugin” caption=“Krita 3.2RC with the G’MIC plugin” url=“/img/2017/krita.png” %}

For the Application, in the updates were in the hundreds, most notable are Libreoffice 5.4, Chrome 62, Kexi 3.2.0, Firefox 55.0.1, Skrooge 2.9.0, MellowPlayer 3.0.0 (with a complete rewrite to QML), Inxi 2.3.35, Inkscape 0.92.2 and Micro 1.3.1.