What shipped, and why

• v26.07.01

  July 1 · current

  Why a new ISO: Kiro's first official monthly release — the Hyprland edition lands and the fish default is now finished.

  • One ISO a month, from July: a single polished release each month instead of daily builds — the next is v26.09.01 (no August release, as July and August are the holiday period).
  • Hyprland edition lands: Kiro's Wayland line arrives as a complete edition, with hyprland-tweak-tool to install popular community configs — ML4W, Omarchy, end-4, HyDE, Caelestia and JaKooLit — each with a risk marker and a backup of your existing config first.
  • Fish, finished: the live session and every install now get the Starship prompt out of the box plus the new fish-tweak-tool GUI; bash and zsh still ship (tobash/tozsh switch back).
  • A new “Kiro Apps” menu gathers the Kiro tweak and config tools and the Website / Releases / Discussions / Source links under one menu.
  • Lock & logout everywhere: archlinux-logout matured into a standalone app with a real settings window, and its lock screen now works on Plasma and Wayland/Hyprland, not just X11.
  • Chromium browsers keep their passwords: added Seahorse to clear the login-keyring password — the fix for Vivaldi and Brave throwing “Decryption Failed” after autologin or a desktop switch.

  Packages: + starship, + kiro-starship, + fish-tweak-tool, + seahorse, + eza; plus updates across the Kiro desktop, keybinding, Plasma-theme, logout and tweak-tool packages.

• v26.06.18

  June 18

  Why a new ISO: rolling your own Kiro ISO is leaner and more reliable — more of the system is now safe to drop in the builder, and a bug that could abort a build is fixed.

  • More of the system is yours to drop: the system-tuning services — ananicy-cpp, firewalld, tuned/tuned-ppd and scx-manager (with their companion apps) — now show up as a removable category in the Kiro ISO Builder and the Arch Linux Tweak Tool's Streamline page. Dropping one no longer aborts the install, so you can build a leaner ISO without breaking it. They still ship by default.
  • Lighter default ISO: the large sardi-icons set (~58 MB) no longer ships by default — it's a one-line opt-in if you want it back.
  • Build-abort bug fixed: building your own ISO with cache-cleaning enabled no longer aborts partway through (a SIGPIPE in the cache-clean step, reported as issue #15) — the build runs cleanly to completion.

  Packages: + ttf-hack-nerd; − sardi-icons (now opt-in); the system-tuning packages moved to the user-removable tier but still ship by default.

• v26.06.14

  June 14

  Why a new ISO: Kiro gains a built-in AI assistant that knows the distro inside out, and a more secure install that verifies Kiro's own packages are genuine before they're installed.

  • An AI assistant at your fingertips: Kiro now ships Kiro Assistant — an AI helper that knows the Kiro distro inside out, ready on your desktop to answer questions and guide you as you work (bring your own key). It's optional and can be removed in one move if you'd rather not have AI on your system.
  • A more secure ISO — signed packages: a fresh install now verifies that packages from Kiro's repository are cryptographically signed before installing them, so you have proof they genuinely came from Kiro and weren't tampered with along the way. Builds on the security focus of the previous ISO.

  Packages: + kiro-assistant (the AI helper); kiro-keyring enforces signed-package verification.

• v26.06.12

  June 12

  Why a new ISO: accessibility becomes first-class from the login screen all the way to the desktop — the SDDM login greeter gains its own on-screen keyboard and low-vision readability, and Kiro ships Onboard with five readable keyboard themes for the desktop session.

  • An on-screen keyboard at the login screen itself: the Kiro Simplicity SDDM theme now carries its own on-screen keyboard, raised by a Keyboard toggle in the login screen's button row. A user with no physical keyboard — touchscreen, tablet, or someone with a mobility impairment — can now type their password and sign in before any desktop session exists. It's toggle-only — it never pops up on its own — and the password field lifts above the keyboard so it's never hidden behind it.
  • A more readable login screen: every control on the greeter — user picker, password field, Login button, clock and power buttons — now renders at a larger, consistent size instead of the small Qt default, and the “Enter your password” hint is now clearly white against the dark background instead of a hard-to-read grey. Easier to read for low-vision users and on high-DPI displays.
  • An on-screen keyboard in the desktop too: Onboard now ships on the ISO, so once you're logged in a touchscreen, tablet or mobility-impaired user has an on-screen keyboard ready without installing anything. It's launched on demand — from the application menu or the Arch Linux Tweak Tool's Accessibility page — and stays out of the way for everyone who doesn't need it.
  • Five Kiro keyboard themes, Azure by default: five cohesive, high-readability Kiro themes — Aurora (signature dark blue→green), Daylight (light, for bright rooms), Beacon (high-contrast amber-on-black, for low vision), Emerald and Azure — with Kiro Azure set as the default. It's only a default: pick any theme in Onboard's settings and your choice sticks.

  Packages: + onboard; updates kiro-sddm-simplicity (login-screen keyboard + readability), + qt5-virtualkeyboard; the five Onboard themes ship via kiro-system-files.

• v26.06.11

  June 11

  Why a new ISO: a Budgie ISO is now usable end to end — both steps that matter, booting in and installing, now work on Budgie's Wayland desktop.

  • Budgie boots straight into the desktop: a Budgie ISO built with the Kiro ISO Builder now autologins into Budgie instead of stopping at the login screen — its session is named differently from every other edition, and the builder now maps it correctly.
  • The installer and the Calamares Tweak Tool work on Wayland: on a Budgie live ISO (a minimal Wayland compositor) both previously did nothing — launched as root, they couldn't reach the display. The launcher now grants the root installer just-enough display access and revokes it afterwards, so both open. GNOME and Plasma already worked; any future Wayland edition (Hyprland, niri) is covered too.
  • Validated end to end: an encrypted btrfs + LUKS2 Budgie install unlocks at boot and comes up clean, alongside a plain default XFCE install.

  Packages: + xorg-xhost (lets the installer grant itself display access on Wayland; harmless on X11).

• v26.06.09

  June 9

  Why a new ISO: the Kiro ISO Builder takes a big step up — build an ISO around any desktop, not just XFCE, and tick extra office and productivity apps onto it before you build — and f2fs lands as a real install-time filesystem choice.

  • Build an ISO around any desktop: the Kiro ISO Builder's Configure screen now lets you pick exactly which editions go on your ISO from everything the medium offers — full desktops XFCE, Cinnamon, GNOME, Plasma, MATE and Budgie, plus the window managers awesome, bspwm, chadwm, i3, leftwm, ohmychadwm and qtile — and choose which one the live ISO logs into first. XFCE is now just one edition among many, so you can roll a pure Cinnamon, GNOME or Plasma ISO with nothing you didn't ask for.
  • Add office & productivity apps to your build: a new Add apps step lets you opt in to apps the base ISO deliberately leaves off — office suites (LibreOffice, OnlyOffice, WPS Office), email clients (Thunderbird, Betterbird, Evolution, Geary and more), text editors, PDF tools, note-takers and scanning utilities — grouped by category with select-all and search. It's the mirror image of the Packages step: Packages strips defaults out, Add apps layers extras in.
  • f2fs in the Calamares Tweak Tool: the filesystem picker now lists f2fs right after ext4, alongside xfs / jfs / btrfs — a flash-friendly, log-structured filesystem well suited to SSD/NVMe installs. It mounts with the same defaults,noatime options as the other non-btrfs choices, so a plain f2fs root just works.
  • f2fs on every medium — your own builds included: the f2fs-tools formatter ships on the ISO, so Calamares can lay down an f2fs root cleanly during install — and any ISO you roll with the Kiro ISO Builder carries it too, no extra package picking.
  • Kiro links in the menu: a new Kiro submenu in the application menu gathers four one-click shortcuts — Website, Releases, Discussions and Source Code — each opening the matching page in your browser, carrying its own coloured Kiro “K”.

  Packages: updates only — kiro-iso-builder (any-desktop selection + Add apps step), kiro-calamares-tweak-tool (f2fs option), kiro-dot-files (Kiro menu links).

• v26.06.08

  June 8

  Why a new ISO: a GRUB install can no longer be bricked by a routine update, and QEMU/KVM virtual machines get host↔guest clipboard out of the box.

  • GRUB installs now self-heal: the new kiro-bootloader-grub package adds pacman hooks that automatically re-run grub-install and rebuild the boot menu whenever GRUB or a kernel updates — closing the long-standing Arch trap where a grub update left the on-disk bootloader out of sync and the machine refused to boot. The boot disk is detected automatically, and it ships only where GRUB is the bootloader (legacy-BIOS installs, plus any UEFI user who picks GRUB in the Calamares Tweak Tool) — cleanly removed on systemd-boot.
  • Host↔guest clipboard in QEMU/KVM: spice-vdagent now ships, so copy/paste between your host and a Kiro guest works out of the box on QEMU/KVM with a SPICE display. It's kept only on QEMU/KVM and removed on bare metal, VirtualBox and VMware (which don't use SPICE).
  • Tidier ISO builder: the Kiro ISO Builder now cleans up its work folder after each build by default — no leftover root-owned folder to trip its pre-flight check.

  Packages: + kiro-bootloader-grub, + spice-vdagent.

• v26.06.07

  June 7

  Why a new ISO: you can now build and customize your own Kiro ISO — the kiro-iso-builder GUI ships on the medium, backed by a beginner-friendly “Build Your Own ISO” guide — and installs are faster and more reliable worldwide thanks to geo-routed CDN mirrors.

  • Build your own ISO, from a GUI: kiro-iso-builder (GTK4) is on the ISO — pick the kernel, choose the NVIDIA driver, and untick optional apps, then build a personalized Kiro ISO without hand-editing a single file.
  • Faster, more reliable installs everywhere: the shipped mirrorlist drops from 605 worldwide servers to 4 geo-routed CDN mirrors (plus a curated Chaotic-AUR list), so package downloads during install are fast anywhere on earth with no per-location tuning.
  • Slim it down after install, too: the ArchLinux Tweak Tool gains a new Streamline page — remove the optional apps that came on the ISO, grouped by category, with save/import selection profiles.
  • Pro-audio ready: pipewire-jack serves the JACK API through PipeWire (no separate daemon), so JACK applications work out of the box.

  Packages: + kiro-iso-builder, + pipewire-jack, + 7zip (replaces deprecated p7zip); − python-pylint.

• v26.06.06

  June 6

  Why a new ISO: drops a paid app and gives the package list a clear, tiered structure — so the ISO is easy to read, fork and rebuild (the groundwork for the “build your own ISO” guide).

  • No paid apps pre-installed: Spotify removed — a paid streaming service doesn’t belong pre-loaded on a community ISO.
  • Keybindings cheatsheet on board: kiro-keybindings is now an explicit package — the auto-detecting, searchable shortcut reference (Super+K).
  • Readable package list: packages.x86_64 is reorganized into risk tiers (never-remove core vs freely-editable apps), so anyone cloning the repo can see at a glance what’s safe to change.

  Packages: − spotify; + kiro-keybindings (explicit).

• v26.06.05

  June 5

  Why a new ISO: validated the full disk-encryption matrix — LUKS2 ext4 / btrfs / xfs / jfs installs all unlock and pass kiro-audit clean (0 WARN / 0 FAIL) — and swaps in better default apps.

  • Better screen recording: OBS Studio replaces SimpleScreenRecorder.
  • CPU scheduler control: scx-manager added — switch sched-ext schedulers at runtime.
  • Apps ship as proper repo packages: dropped the build-from-source -git suffix on the ATT, archlinux-logout, alacritty-tweak-tool and ohmychadwm packages.

  Packages: + obs-studio, + scx-manager; − simplescreenrecorder-git, − lastpass.

• v26.06.04

  June 4

  Why a new ISO: adds the Calamares tweaking tool to the installer toolset and moves the shell baseline onto the renamed repo.

  • Calamares Tweak Tool (CTT): kiro-calamares-tweak-tool ships for use during install (stripped from the final installed system).
  • Shell source moved: the build now fetches the skel .bashrc from kirodubes/kiro-shells.

  Packages: + kiro-calamares-tweak-tool.

• v26.06.02

  June 2

  Why a new ISO: finishes the de-brand at the package level — the installed system now pulls Kiro-named packages instead of the old edu-* ones.

  • No behaviour change, new identity: same configs and defaults, but every Kiro config package is renamed edu-* → kiro-* and pulled from the Kiro repos.

  Packages: 16 config packages renamed edu-* → kiro-* (kiro-system-files, kiro-shells, kiro-dot-files, kiro-rofi, kiro-xfce, the kiro-neo-candy themes, and more).

• v26.06.01

  June 1 · baseline

  Why a new ISO: first June build — locks in the late-May kernel-agnostic overhaul as the new default.

  • Kernel-agnostic end to end: default kernel is now linux-cachyos, with linux-zen selectable as a fallback right in the boot menu; a new kiro_kernel Calamares module installs every kernel the medium ships.
  • GPU just works: chwd auto-detects the card at install, with three NVIDIA boot options (modern / auto-detect / open) so old and new cards both boot.
  • Polished install: dark KiroDark installer matching the website, and the animated Kiro “K” splash draws from the moment the live ISO boots.

  Packages: + linux-cachyos + linux-zen; drops linux-lqx and the third-party Liquorix repo.

Already on Kiro? You don’t need any of these ISOs — sudo pacman -Syu keeps your system current. A new ISO only matters for a brand-new install.