Found Kiro on DistroWatch

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A few days ago so decided to try it out. I installed to a harddrive as I haven’t always got consistent results using VM’s.
I usually manually partition drives EFI, Root and Home for installation but couldn’t make that happen when trying to install Kiro whether creating the partitions within the installer or before hand. Got a "Boost.Python error in job “bootloader” error at the end of installation both times.
I was able to install using the “Erase disk” option in Calamares with no issues which installs an EFI partition and another for both Root and Home. I didn’t try the “install along side” option.

There are multiple DE’s to choose from, I’m using KDE Plasma. I have installed dozens of the programs/software I use on EOS with no issues. So far, so good.
Kiro has it’s own repo (Nemesis) along with Core, Extra, Multilib and Chaotic-Aur installed. Seems very responsive and fast but that might be because I haven’t “bloated” it fully up yet :slight_smile:

From the website here’s a few of statements about Kiro…

Questions, before you commit

Short answers to the things people ask before downloading.

Why Kiro instead of vanilla Arch?

Same Arch underneath, less assembly. Calamares replaces the wiki transcription, the repos save you from rebuilding common packages, and the defaults are opinionated so you can boot into a usable desktop in under an hour.

Who's behind Kiro, and who is it for?

Kiro is built by Erik Dubois — the creator of ArcoLinux, who has spent years building teaching-first, community-focused Arch distributions and documenting every step on YouTube — working with Claude AI (Anthropic) as his dev partner. It’s a one-developer-plus-AI project. For the past year Kiro has been his personal build: the exact system he runs every day, shared openly. From June 1, 2026 the focus shifts — the same opinionated foundation, now shaped for the people who use it (driven by what users actually need, not what the creator happens to like). Code lives on GitHub and the walkthroughs on YouTube — the everyday tutorials stay free forever, while the more advanced, deep-dive courses live in the members-only realm. See Community.

How is Kiro different from CachyOS, Garuda, EndeavourOS, or other Arch-based systems?

They’re all Arch-based, just with different priorities. CachyOS is performance-first — a custom scheduler and its own optimized repos. Garuda leans gaming, with heavy GUI theming. EndeavourOS stays deliberately close to upstream Arch with a light touch. Kiro ships comparable performance and hardening tuning — linux-cachyos by default with linux-zen alongside, sane defaults — while keeping the userland close to upstream Arch. It adds chaotic-aur for pre-built AUR binaries, its own nemesis_repo, the ArchLinux Tweak Tool, and AI-assisted development. Less gaming and ricing, more a curated, learnable Arch you can daily-drive.

Kiro ships ATT, which installs any of 13 desktops on demand:

  • 7 tilers
    Awesome · Bspwm · Chadwm · I3 · Leftwm · Ohmychadwm · Qtile
  • 6 full DEs
    Budgie · Cinnamon · Gnome · Mate · Plasma · Xfce

Pick what fits, or install several and switch from your login screen.

2

You lost me at Claude…

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I gave it a quick spin a couple of days ago as I was pleased to see Erik Dubois back launching distros again. Much of the branding on the live ISO I used is still ArcoLinux, and after playing with it for a bit I decided to wait for a few months before trying it again.

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The One and Only Eric Dubois!
Respect!

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The World needs more like him :+1:

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I follow Erik Dubois on YouTube and find his videos very interesting. However, the Kiro Linux distribution does not appeal to me because it is a project maintained by a single person and, in my opinion, it does not offer anything beyond what was already proposed by the ArcoLinux project. ArcoLinux itself was a very interesting project because it provided several levels of interaction with the Arch Linux ecosystem.

Considering what happened with the closure of the ArcoLinux project which was discontinued because its maintainer felt overwhelmed, I believe Kiro Linux will eventually face the same fate.

Personally, I have little interest in projects maintained by a single individual, such as Kiro Linux, T2 Linux SDE, or Archcraft, as they do not provide the same sense of long-term continuity that projects like EndeavourOS, Garuda, CachyOS, or Artix can offer.

But I do agree that they offer great opportunities for those who want to learn more about Linux.

7

You said it!

I spent very little time with Arco and it’s community but enough to see Eric’s dedication, generosity and friendliness. I wish him all the best in life and all his undertakings. And now with his Kiro.

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Interesting. :thinking:

From when I switched to Linux, about a decade ago, the advice has always been against installing multiple DEs. I wonder what he (or the AI :roll_eyes:) is doing to segregate the various configurations, etc.?

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He talks about it some (possible conflicts and resolution of any) on his website.
I’ve been going back and forth from xfce and plasma and so far, no issues.

The Kernel management in the ATT (ArchLinx Tweak Tool) is interesting, some 3 dozen kernels there.
Arch Kernels = 6…
Chaotic-AUR Kernels = CachyOS x 5, Xanmod x 5, Liquorix x 1, Mainline x 2, Specific LTS versions x 4, x86-64 microach level builds x 3, AMD Zen x 4, and Specialty x 5).

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:up_arrow: :up_arrow: :up_arrow:

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This, at least back when Mint dropped their Plasma edition, was considered the safest option, but the “going” idea back then was apparently to remove unneeded Xfce stuff after installing Plasma, rather than have both.

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Has Mint had a solid working KDE Plasma yet?
They were experimenting with it when I was using Mint as my first Linux distro and my daily driver.

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It worked really well for me. I started with the Cinnamon edition (Mint 17.3) in early 2016 but decided to switch to the KDE edition for later installs. There were teething troubles with newer versions of Plasma, sure, but no show-stoppers.

I think Mint 18 was the last to offer a Plasma ISO.

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FWIW I have personally always used .xprofile or .xsessionrc plus sxkhd accross wms and xfce4 or lxqt. I have only ever had issues where a wm needed a special keybind. Granted my population of wms is limited but I have had hlwm, i3wm, dwm, spectrwm, openbox, xfce4 on both debian and arch (variants) at the same time- without problems. I tend to stay with x11 and now that I’m old and cranky, I use dwm most of the time with i3wm and xfce4 as backups.

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The issue here though, is how long is x11 going to continue being a viable option? Even Xfce will be heading towards Wayland in due course so how many DEs or WMs will continue to support x11 going forward? :thinking:

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I mean xlibre exits and seems to still be going strong. I don’t think existing wms will just disappear out of nowhere. As it is with xfce, as far as I cought it they are just working on a second project (think it’s called xfwl?) which is xfce but on Wayland, they are completely rewriting it. But I think they said that xfce will continue to exist and be supported (how long idk).
For other DEs, plasma has already a fork (SonicDE), that one seems also solid (many anti systemd/anti Wayland distros ship it) so there is interest in it. I think gnome also has a fork but that one as far as I remember is still work in progress.
All in all there is interest for X11/libre and as long as this interest is there, there will be forks and alternatives I think

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ArcoLinux for me was a kind of an educational project, with aim of helping one comfortably settle on Arch.
I don’t feel like Kiro has that aspect anymore – rather another Arch-based distro with an opinionated setup.

Yet, the big strength of Linux is freedom. Make a decision, win your prize.

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Xlibre is actually quite functional on Debian… less so on arch, although Artix offers it as their standard (without xorg). I have had issues with nvidia and xlibre on arch- but then who doesn’t have problems with nvidia.???:old_man:

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I cant recall having issues with nvidia specifically, not on my pc and my laptop also not really.

(for my laptop “not really” as i had 1 issue for 10 months straight but that seems to have been a kernel regression, as it only seemed to happen with my hardware specifically (nvidia partially related, not 100%, even when nvidia gpu completely disabled the issue was there), and also wayland played a role, but for the most part it was the kernel as lts was fine until that one also got an update after months and one day a update came and all my problems simply disappeared just as they came out of nowhere with an update)

20

I have a HP 7740 printer in another room and decided to install it this AM.
Turned out to be the easiest printer install I ever had on any OS!

Clicked on Add in the Printers section in System Settings, it searched for about 10-15 seconds, found my printer, then offered driver choices, I clicked on “driverless” and a few seconds later it was installed. Whole process took less then a minute.

I don’t know what Kiro has (under the hood) to make this so simple and fast but was pleasantly surprised to say the least!