KaOS Linux 2026.03 has been released today as the ISO snapshot for March 2026 of this independent Linux distro using Arch Linux’s pacman package manager.

Last month, when KaOS Linux 2026.02 was released, we reported that the distribution had dropped its KDE/Plasma desktop environment, after more than 12 years using it as the default, in favor of a Niri/Noctalia setup to avoid any use the systemd init system and move to Dinit instead.

Now, the KaOS Linux 2026.03 release is here to strip more systemd-related components from the distribution in an attempt to become a systemd-free distro. As such, the devs removed the systemd-boot bootloader component, along with mkinitcpio, which was replaced with Dracut for initramfs creation.