Changes
(compared to Debian Testing w/ KDE images, as of 2021-09-15)
- 32-bit is a supported architecture without requiring any manual tweaks.
- We use a minimal KDE Plasma environment without the KDE PIM suite or any other large pieces of additional software.
- No tweaks or configuration changes are made to KDE Plasma - It's entirely upstream, even including the wallpaper.
- A customized version of Calamares is used rather than the Debian Installer.
- You're prompted to choose your desktop theme during installation, minimizing post-install work.
- vm.swappiness is set to 1 by default, minimizing the risk of swapping until the system is physically out of RAM, protecting hard drive health and improving responsiveness.
- All "Magic SysRq" combinations are enabled by default, making it easier to safely recover the system during chaos.
- Full-color emojis.
- Steam, Lutris, and Feral GameMode are preinstalled for convenience.
- PipeWire handles all audio (PulseAudio, JACK, and ALSA clients) by default.
- NoHang is preconfigured to increase responsiveness in low memory scenarios, with a desktop-focused configuration.
- Swap is configurable in the installer with automatic partitioning, including the ability to disable swap outright, only add enough for hibernation, or use a swapfile.
- BTRFS is used by default, providing lightweight and transparent compression, copy-on-write, deduplication, asynchronous SSD TRIM, and restore points via Timeshift.
- If you run a command from a package you don't have installed, the terminal will suggest it.
- Commands only available to root will explain that they require privileges, instead of claiming they aren't found when run as a regular user.
- By default, filesystems are mounted with "noatime" to improve performance.
- Automatic partitioning allows the user to alternatively install with EXT4, XFS, and F2FS.
- More applications use native filepickers by default, thanks to GTK_USE_PORTAL=1 being set.
- Drawing tablets can be discovered and configured from your system settings.
- Your desktop's theme can be chosen during the installation.
- Proprietary firmware and CPU microcode is included by default.
- Discover is configured to support Flatpaks and firmware updates out-of-the-box.
- systemd-boot is used instead of GRUB by default.
- Mesa's Vulkan drivers are preinstalled (for 32-bit and 64-bit).
- The default browser is Chromium, with uBlock Origin preinstalled.
- Haruna, a frontend for MPV, handles video and audio by default, with wide codec support.
- All stable VPN interfaces for Network Manager are preinstalled.
- Plymouth is preconfigured with a Breeze boot splash.
- All archive formats, including RAR, are supported.
- The sources.list file tracks "testing" to ensure a semi-reliable rolling release.
- A number of other useful packages are included, including TLP, KIO-GDrive, GStreamer plugins, Samba, and additional KDE configuration modules.
- Users with administrative privileges (i.e. in the "sudo" group) can mount external drives without having to enter a password every time.
- "Minimal" images are available, providing a ready-to-use desktop in 1.5GB. (Debian KDE images are 3.2GB)