Kulan OS

What’s new

Every version of Kulan OS. Installed computers get these through Software Update; there’s no need to reinstall.

2.6.1: Instant answers, and fixes from testing 2.6

Latest
  • Ask Kulan answers the time, the date, your battery and free space straight away, even before you've downloaded a model
  • Saved passwords and automatic sign-in — If you sign in automatically, apps that use saved passwords (Wi-Fi, browsers, online accounts) ask for the keyring's password, because nothing unlocked it. Setup now says so, and Kulan Settings › Users offers a fix: turn off automatic sign-in (recommended), or keep it and remove the keyring's password
  • Smaller restore points — They leave out apps from Flathub, the assistant's models, Docker's data and downloaded update files, which all come back from where they were downloaded
  • Short names in the app grid for apps whose names were cut off, like Writer, Calc, GIMP and VLC. Search still finds the full names
  • Update History shows one update as one entry
  • Kulan Fleet sign-in accepts the address however it was copied, and the Kulan Assistant window shows its name and icon in the dock

2.6: Your phone, your backups, and a lighter Kulan for 4 GB computers

  • Phone link — Share files and links with your phone, see its notifications here, and read and send texts from the computer. Install it from Kulan Settings › Phone (about 5 MB), install KDE Connect on the phone, and pair. Works best with Android; on iPhone, files and the clipboard. Nothing listens on the network until you install it, and it can be switched off there
  • Backups in one place — Kulan Settings › Backups backs up your files to a USB drive or another disk, encrypted and automatically, and brings back everything or an earlier version of one file
  • Lighter mode for computers with 4 GB of memory — On by itself there, with fewer effects, file search that never gets in the way, and more compressed memory. Kulan Settings › Battery and power switches it
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  • Ask Kulan does more — Find photos from last week, list the biggest files, find duplicate files, set timers, add to your to-do list, fix Bluetooth and printers, and back up now. Speak your question with the microphone button, or ask about text on the screen, such as an error message. And an Ask Kulan button in the top bar
  • Clipboard history pastes for you — Pick something you copied earlier and it goes straight into the app you were using
  • Quick Note and To-do say when they can't save, and have Undo after you delete something
  • Counting computers, privately — Once a week Kulan OS sends only its version, PC or Mac, and roughly how long it's been installed, so we know how many computers to support. No ID and nothing about you. Switch it off in Kulan Settings › Privacy, where What's sent shows the exact report
  • For organisations (Kulan Fleet, now in Kulan Settings › Add-ons) — Policies for automatic updates, the firewall, the screen lock and encryption; each computer's apps; a Needs attention list; an activity log; and erasing a lost or stolen computer, only when its user allowed it and its disk is encrypted
  • Every update is now tested by installing the previous release and updating it, the way Software Update does, before it reaches you

2.5: Ask Kulan, a faster desktop and a more powerful Terminal

  • Ask Kulan — Press Shift+Cmd+Space (Shift+Windows key+Space on a PC) and ask anything, or say what you'd like done. It answers from what it can see on this computer ("why is my laptop slow?"), tidies Downloads or the Desktop into folders, sets reminders that come even after a restart, fixes Wi-Fi and sound, checks what's using space and changes settings. It shows you first and waits for Do it, and most things can be undone. Kulan Assistant runs on this computer: nothing you type leaves it
  • Apps ready sooner — A couple of minutes after you sign in, while the computer is idle, Kulan OS gets Firefox, Files, Terminal and Kulan Settings ready, so the first time you open them is as quick as the next. Only with memory to spare, never on battery, and the memory is given back whenever anything needs it
  • A more powerful Terminal — Ctrl+R searches everything you've typed before, Ctrl+T finds a file, "z" jumps to folders you use, nicer file listings with eza, and ripgrep, fd, bat and btop built in
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  • One search — Cmd+Space finds apps, files, every setting (printers and sharing too, with nothing listed twice) and sums, and its last result, Ask Kulan, opens Ask Kulan with what you typed
  • The kulan command — Kulan info shows this computer at a glance, kulan update installs updates, kulan doctor checks for common problems and says how to fix them, and kulan settings opens any page
  • Ask Kulan Assistant in the Terminal — Ask how to do something with kulan ask, and after a command fails press Alt+K to hear why and how to fix it. It runs on this computer
  • Missing commands — Type one that isn't installed and the Terminal says which package has it
  • Printers in Kulan Settings — See each printer and what it's doing, pick the default, print a test page, pause it or cancel waiting pages, and add a printer found on your network or plugged in, without drivers for most modern printers
  • TPM unlock (Kulan Settings › Security › Start-up) — On computers with a TPM 2.0 chip and Secure Boot on, type a short PIN at start-up instead of the long disk password, and the chip locks itself after repeated wrong guesses. The disk password still works whenever the chip says no

2.4.1: A simpler Software Update

  • Software Update, simpler — Automatic Updates and Update History at the top, one clear status in the middle, and More Details on the Kulan OS website. Updates show by the names you know, like Firefox or Encryption, instead of package codes
  • The Kulan OS website — Os.kulangroup.com has the downloads, an install guide (including keeping Windows), what's new in every version, and help

2.4: The new Kulan look

  • Kulan Installer — Kulan OS's own installer, in four short steps (keyboard, where to install, time zone, account). Erase a disk, or install next to Windows in its free space without deleting anything, with the disk encrypted if you like. Everything it needs is on the USB stick, so installing works without the internet. Advanced install (Calamares) is still there for choosing partitions yourself
  • The new Kulan look — Night navy and a cool mist on every app's windows, sidebars and menus, rounder windows, and Manrope for titles
  • Kulan Settings redesigned — A coloured icon tile for every page, the open page highlighted in your accent colour, a large title on each page, and rounder cards with more room between them
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  • More settings in one place — Kulan Settings itself, instead of a separate GNOME Settings window, has new Notifications (each app's banners, sounds and lock-screen notifications), Mouse and touchpad, Accessibility, Date and time (time zone, setting the clock, the top bar's clock), Users (your picture, name and password; add, remove and manage other people's accounts) and Language and region (your language, formats, the login screen's language, adding languages) pages
  • And inside the pages you already had — Each app's volume (Sound), app permissions for the camera, microphone, location, screenshots and background apps, and the connectivity check (Privacy), every installed wallpaper (Appearance), typing languages and every keyboard shortcut, including your own (Keyboard), automatic power saver and brightness (Battery and power), and the hardware model, graphics, firmware and desktop version (About)
  • Wi-Fi, network and Bluetooth — Kulan Settings now handles work and school Wi-Fi (eduroam and other sign-in networks), hidden networks, a hotspot to share your internet, VPNs (add WireGuard or OpenVPN from a file, connect with a switch), the proxy, and each connection's details; Bluetooth finds nearby devices and pairs them right there, including the codes headphones and keyboards show
  • Displays — Join two screens into one desktop, mirror them, or use just one; choose the main screen and where the other one sits. New Default apps page: which app opens web links, email, music, videos, photos and PDFs, and what happens when you plug in a USB stick. Only Printers, Online accounts and Sharing still open GNOME Settings
  • A new Control Centre — Rounded tiles, thick sliders and Kulan's teal for what's on
  • Dock and app grid — A rounder navy dock, a wider search in the app grid, rounder folders and night navy behind the overview
  • Desktop widgets restyled — Big Manrope numbers, amber headings, a teal Weather card and a paper-yellow note
  • Four new desktop widgets — Clock (with your world clocks from Clocks), System (processor, memory, disk and battery), To-do (tick tasks off right on the desktop) and Now Playing (play, pause and skip). Choose and reorder them in Kulan Settings > Desktop and windows; they flow into a second column when the screen is full
  • Fixed — The Calendar widget could say 'Nothing else today' twice, and the Weather widget showed the weather station's name and 'Unknown' instead of your city and the conditions
  • Lock screen — The clock in Manrope, with a ringed photo and a cleaner password field
  • One icon family — Kulan's apps and GNOME's apps share the same rounded square, gradient and white symbol
  • Compliance mode (Kulan Settings > Security) — One switch brings the computer to a security baseline checked against CIS Controls v8 and NIST SP 800-53, keeps the screen lock from being turned off, and saves a report to hand to an auditor or a client
  • Fleet management (Kulan Settings > About > Organisation) — Join your organisation with a one-time code; the computer reports its model, updates, compliance and TPM status every hour, never files, browsing or messages, and the organisation can only ask it to report, install updates, turn compliance mode on, lock the screen or restart
  • Kulan Assistant can do things for you — Say what you'd like ("dark mode and a smaller dock", "make text bigger", "find my CV"), see the plan in plain words, press Do it, and Undo if you change your mind. It runs on this computer and can only use Kulan's own safe actions
  • Kulan Fleet for administrators — An optional app, not installed by default. Sign in with your email and a one-time code to see your organisation's computers, their compliance results and waiting updates, make join codes, and ask computers to report, install updates, turn compliance mode on, lock the screen or restart

Kulan OS 2.3

  • No more freezing when memory runs out — Kulan OS closes the one app using too much and tells you which
  • Starts up faster — The update check waits until after you're signed in, and file search indexing only runs when the computer is idle
  • Restore points stay small — Only the newest two taken before updates are kept, all of them stay within a quarter of the disk, and Kulan Settings > Storage shows their size with Delete All
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  • New installs swap to compressed memory only, with no swap file on the disk
  • The dock's settings icon opens Kulan Settings, which now links to every GNOME Settings page (notifications, accounts, sharing, accessibility, language); GNOME Settings itself is in the System folder
  • Kulan Settings > Desktop and windows — Show the Bin, drives and your Home folder on the desktop, and where new items appear, in plain words
  • Tidy the app grid — Sorts apps from A to Z and closes the gaps between pages (done once automatically for grids with gaps)
  • The installer in Kulan colours, with rounded fields and buttons
  • Software Update in Kulan Settings is the one place for every update: Debian, Kulan and your apps (Flatpak) together, installed with one button; the App Store (GNOME Software) no longer shows or downloads updates of its own
  • Restart to finish updating — After kernel, desktop or driver updates, Software Update and the top bar offer a restart
  • With automatic updates on, apps update daily too
  • Spotlight search — Cmd+Space opens a search bar over your windows for apps, files, sums, characters, Kulan Settings and GNOME Settings pages, and Kulan Assistant answers; arrow keys and Enter, Escape to close (Kulan Settings > Keyboard can open Activities instead)
  • Kulan Settings pages appear in search, in Spotlight and Activities
  • The live session no longer shows a broken installer icon on the desktop; Install Kulan OS is the first icon in the dock
  • Works well in VMware Fusion and Workstation — Shared clipboard, drag and drop, automatic screen size, and the start-up screen shows properly
  • Firefox's window buttons are round and red, yellow and green, like every other app
  • Desktop widgets — Calendar (today and what's next), Weather, Prayer Times (the next prayer, while it's on) and your note, at the top left of the desktop; choose them in Kulan Settings > Desktop and windows
  • Quick Note — Cmd+Shift+N opens a note over whatever you're doing, saved as you type and shown in the Note widget
  • Tags in Files — Right-click > Tags to mark files and folders Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple or Grey; a coloured dot shows on them, and searching for a colour in Spotlight finds them
  • Undo the last update — Software Update can put the system back to how it was before the last update, without touching your files, and pauses automatic updates for 3 days so it doesn't come straight back
  • Kulan Store — The app store has Kulan's name and icon, with Kulan picks of well-known apps; it no longer shows updates, which are all in Software Update
  • Chromium add-on — A second browser for sites that work best in Chrome-type browsers, from Debian, with Kulan's privacy settings and ad blocking; Firefox stays the default
  • Settings > Sound shows the alert sound (Click) instead of "Unknown"; Kulan's other sounds stay
  • Restart works in ARM virtual machines (UTM on Apple silicon) — Instead of freezing at "Exiting boot services", Restart goes straight into the new system (kexec). PCs keep that switched off as part of Kulan's kernel hardening
  • Kulan Settings has its own Wi-Fi and network, Bluetooth, Sound, Battery and power, and Displays pages: join a network, connect headphones, pick speakers and microphone, change resolution, scale or rotation, and choose a power mode without leaving Kulan Settings
  • In virtual machines the screen no longer shows "Display output is not active" after sitting idle: it goes dark and locks as usual, and a key press brings it back
  • Kulan Files — A status bar with the folder's path, the number of items and the free space; a preview pane (Shift+Ctrl+P or the toolbar button) with a large preview, tags, size and dates; and a Finder-style sidebar with Favourites, Locations and your Tags
  • Encrypted disks — If you mistype the disk password when the computer starts, it simply asks again instead of giving up after three tries
  • Smaller, calmer icons — Files (64 px, about the Finder's size), the desktop, the dock and the app grid; each can still be made bigger in Kulan Settings or Files
  • Kulan's red, yellow and green window buttons on more apps — Apps from the Kulan Store (Flatpak) and Qt apps such as KeePassXC (they now open through XWayland, where GNOME draws their frame, kept sharp on high-resolution screens)
  • A new start-up screen — The six dots of the Kulan gathering walk in and meet, the centre lights up, and the ring gently breathes while the computer starts; the disk password is asked right under it
  • Apps reopen after a restart — The apps you had open come back when you sign in again, as on a Mac (switch it off in Kulan Settings > Desktop and windows)
  • Faster start-up on slower computers — Work that used to be redone at every start (about 20 seconds on a 2 GB, 1-processor machine) is now done once when Kulan OS is built, and the update check waits until the desktop has finished loading
  • Smoother on computers without graphics acceleration (many virtual machines, older PCs): the live blur behind menus and app folders is switched off there and animations are a little shorter; they come back by themselves once acceleration works
  • The Weather widget stays off the desktop until you've picked a place in Weather
  • Kulan Settings' sidebar is grouped like a Mac's — Connections, sound and attention, looks, power and space, protection, input and helpers, then updates and About, with a little space between groups

Kulan OS 2.2

  • New Kulan OS logo, the gathering — Six people in a circle around one centre
  • New Kulan teal waves wallpaper, with the original 1.0 waves as a second choice in Kulan Settings > Appearance
  • Kulan Settings — One app for appearance, dock, top bar, desktop and windows, Night Light, keyboard, Focus, Assistant, Prayer Times, login items, storage, security, privacy, Parental Controls, updates, add-ons and About
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  • Kulan Assistant, private and on this computer — Writing tools for selected text in any app (Cmd+Shift+W), Summarise in Files, Translate and Explain after Live Text, and search your files with questions in Activities
  • Dictation — Press Cmd+Shift+D, speak, press it again, and your words are typed where the cursor is, recognised on this computer
  • Prayer Times (off until you turn it on) — The next prayer in the top bar, today's times and a gentle notification at each prayer, for any of 24,000 cities, worked out on this computer
  • Parental Controls — Choose the apps each child can use, and a family-safe web filter for the whole computer
  • Files — Kulan teal folders with symbols, Folder Colour on right-click, a Projects folder in the sidebar, New Document templates, large icons with folders first, and the Bin in the dock
  • Files and folders on the desktop, as on a Mac
  • Terminal — Ptyxis with Kulan colours, a Mac-style prompt with the git branch, history search with the arrow keys, and zsh with suggestions as you type for new accounts
  • One look everywhere — Older apps and Qt apps (VLC, KeePassXC, the installer) now match the rest, in your accent colour, light or dark
  • Security — See at a glance if the firewall, disk encryption, updates, restore points, screen lock and backups are on, with one-click fixes, plus a security checkup
  • Privacy — A private computer name, encrypted DNS that can block ads, trackers or adult sites in every app, camera, microphone and location switches, and a list of what Kulan OS connects to
  • Browsers — Firefox blocks ads and trackers (uBlock Origin), cookie banners and insecure pages; Chromium and Chrome turn ad tracking off
  • KeePassXC password manager and Metadata Cleaner are built in
  • Mac-style shortcuts — Cmd+Space to search, Cmd+Shift+3/4/5 for screenshots and screen recording, Ctrl+Cmd+Space for emoji
  • Live Text — Cmd+Shift+T copies the text from anything on screen, read on your computer
  • Clipboard history — Cmd+Shift+V shows what you copied recently (kept until the screen locks)
  • Window snapping into halves and quarters, Quick Look (press Space in Files), Weather and Clocks, and display scaling such as 125% and 150%
  • Focus — Do Not Disturb on a daily schedule
  • Storage — See how full the disk is and free up space in one click
  • Add-ons — Kulan Assistant, a Learning Pack of defensive security tools, Steam (PCs), Phone Link for Android phones, Nearby Share (like AirDrop), a virus scanner, the Developer Kit, and office and media apps
  • Faster and lighter — Compressed memory, fewer background services, a shorter boot menu, and Wi-Fi, graphics and sound firmware for more laptops
  • Window buttons in red, yellow and green with symbols (Mac dots and GNOME standard are a click away); automatic light and dark mode following the sunset
  • In virtual machines (UTM, VirtualBox, VMware) the mouse pointer is drawn smoothly at the right size
  • Apple silicon and other ARM computers — The boot splash and disk password prompt now appear on the screen, without technical messages

Kulan OS 2.1

  • New Kulan OS logo — People gathered under an acacia tree at sunset
  • Kulan menu at the top left — About, Settings, Update Center, Lock, Restart and Shut Down
  • Round red, yellow and green window buttons
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  • New dusk and dawn wallpapers with the acacia on the horizon
  • Calmer dock and quicker animations
  • Simpler app grid — Everyday apps out in the open, only Utilities and System in folders
  • New installs unlock an encrypted disk once, in the Kulan splash, with your own keyboard layout
  • Kulan logo on the login screen
  • The installer labels the new partitions Kulan OS
  • The screen stays on in the live session and while installing

Kulan OS 2.0

  • New Kulan look for the top bar, menus, quick settings, notifications, calendar and lock screen
  • App grid folders — Office, Internet, Media, Developer, Utilities and System
  • Update Center — See, install and schedule updates, with a top-bar indicator
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  • Restore points — Roll the system back if an update ever causes trouble
  • LibreOffice, VLC and GIMP built in
  • Developer kit — Python, Git, Docker and build tools in one click
  • New Bibata cursor
  • ISO files now carry their build number

Kulan OS 1.0

  • GNOME desktop on Debian 13 with the Kulan look
  • Welcome tour, firewall, automatic security updates and private defaults
  • Kulan update channel, signed with Kulan's own key