Kannolo 28 Release Notes

Kannolo is a Fedora Remix based on the KDE Plasma Desktop Workspace and the KDE Applications, maintained by Kevin Kofler. Kannolo 28 includes the new Plasma 5, which is regularly updated to the latest upstream release. (Plasma 4 is not available in Kannolo 28.) The main difference between the upstream distribution and Kannolo is that Kannolo aims at shipping with a pure KDE experience. Therefore, Kannolo does not include any version of GTK+, nor any packages that depend on it. They are, however, available from the upstream distribution’s online repositories, enabled by default.

The main package set differences compared to the KDE spin of the upstream distribution are:

• Kannolo remains committed to shipping a Qt browser as its default browser. In Kannolo 28, that browser is QupZilla, which is expected to become the next KDE browser (under the name Falkon). The current KDE browser Konqueror is still available as an alternative. Unlike the upstream distribution’s KDE spin, Firefox is not installed by default, due to its GTK+ dependency, as well as system/desktop integration, freedom and privacy concerns.
• The Anaconda installer (based on GTK+ 3) has been replaced with Calamares, a cross-distribution installation framework based on Qt 5.
• The FirewallD firewall and its firewall-config GTK+ frontend have been replaced with UFW and the ufw-kde frontend. Since ufw-kde has not been ported to System Settings 5 yet, a standalone menu entry is provided to run ufw-kde outside of System Settings.
• SELinux has been disabled by default (and support packages omitted from the live image to reduce its size), because giving the user any feedback about denials requires the GTK+-based setroubleshoot utility.
• ABRT is not included because it requires GTK+. Crashes in KDE applications are intercepted by KCrash anyway. Those can be reported directly to the application developer using DrKonqi (which is automatically started by KCrash).
• The kannolo-root-unlocker package, which enables running Dolphin, KWrite and (if installed) Kate as root, is installed by default, because these are important system administration tools that users may want to run as root. The package uses RPM file triggers to automatically patch those applications when they are installed or updated. If this feature is not desired, simply uninstall the kannolo-root-unlocker package to completely undo its effects.
• Branding from the upstream distribution has been replaced with Kannolo branding or removed.

Another difference is that the upstream distribution's live image is a pure installable live image that does not allow any kind of package selection during installation, whereas Kannolo is a hybrid live and netinstall image, powered by the Calamares netinstall module, which offers a selection of recommended and optional packages to install from the Internet during the installation process:

• The packages are installed on top of the installed copy of the live environment. In other words, the packages contained on the live image (except the Calamares installer, which is automatically uninstalled from the installed system) are considered the minimal installation and are always installed.
• The list of packages offered in the netinstall step was carefully hand-picked to feature only selected KDE/Qt applications (that are not already on the live image, see above) with no GTK+ dependencies. The full set of packages from the upstream distribution's repositories (including GTK+/GNOME applications) is of course available after installation.
• Due to the availability of the netinstall step, and in order to minimize the live image download size and allow for more package selection flexibility, packages that are not typically needed within the live environment itself are not included on the live image, but offered only through the netinstall step. The packages omitted from the live image for that reason, but recommended for installations, are listed under Recommended packages and selected by default in the netinstall step. The optional applications that are also featured in the netinstall step are unselected by default. By design, the default selection (recommended packages only) results in an installation closest to the upstream distribution. (The package set will be essentially identical, except for the "main package set differences" listed above. Please note that due to the branding removal, instead of the upstream distribution's branded Media Writer, the netinstall now recommends the unbranded ISO Image Writer from the KDE project.)
• It is possible to install Kannolo without an Internet connection (or without setting it up in the live environment), though the Calamares installer warns you about this on startup (but allows you to proceed anyway), but this will result in a minimal installation with no netinstalled packages.