Switching to Linux in 2025 is easier than ever, especially with Windows 10 reaching end-of-life in October 2025 and pushing users toward expensive hardware upgrades.
Whether you’re migrating from Windows or macOS, today’s beginner-friendly Linux distributions offer polished interfaces, automatic hardware detection, and zero licensing fees – all while breathing new life into older computers.
The post The Complete Guide to Best Linux Distros for Beginners in 2025 appeared first on Linux Today.
Filesystems are complex and performance-sensitive beasts. They can also
present security concerns. Microkernel-based systems have long pushed
filesystems into separate processes in order to contain any vulnerabilities
that may be found there. Linux can do the same with the
Filesystem in
Userspace (FUSE) subsystem, but using FUSE brings a significant
performance penalty. Darrick Wong is working on ways to eliminate that
penalty, and he has
a massive patch
set showing how ext4 filesystems can be safely implemented in user space by
unprivileged processes with good performance. This work has the potential
to radically change how filesystems are managed on Linux systems.
Security updates have been issued by Debian (unbound), Fedora (deepin-qt5integration, deepin-qt5platform-plugins, dtkcore, dtkgui, dtklog, dtkwidget, fcitx-qt5, fcitx5-qt, fontforge, gammaray, golang-github-openprinting-ipp-usb, kddockwidgets, keepassxc, kf5-akonadi-server, kf5-frameworkintegration, kf5-kwayland, plasma-integration, python-qt5, qadwaitadecorations, qt5, qt5-qt3d, qt5-qtbase, qt5-qtcharts, qt5-qtconnectivity, qt5-qtdatavis3d, qt5-qtdeclarative, qt5-qtdoc, qt5-qtgamepad, qt5-qtgraphicaleffects, qt5-qtimageformats, qt5-qtlocation, qt5-qtmultimedia, qt5-qtnetworkauth, qt5-qtquickcontrols, qt5-qtquickcontrols2, qt5-qtremoteobjects, qt5-qtscript, qt5-qtscxml, qt5-qtsensors, qt5-qtserialbus, qt5-qtserialport, qt5-qtspeech, qt5-qtsvg, qt5-qttools, qt5-qttranslations, qt5-qtvirtualkeyboard, qt5-qtwayland, qt5-qtwebchannel, qt5-qtwebengine, qt5-qtwebkit, qt5-qtwebsockets, qt5-qtwebview, qt5-qtx11extras, qt5-qtxmlpatterns, qt5ct, and xorg-x11-server), Mageia (binutils, gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad, libsoup, libsoup3, mediawiki, net-tools, and tigervnc, x11-server, and x11-server-xwayland), Red Hat (tigervnc), SUSE (aws-efs-utils, fetchmail, flake-pilot, ImageMagick, java-1_8_0-ibm, java-1_8_0-openjdk, kernel-devel, kubecolor, OpenSMTPD, sccache, tiff, and zellij), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-6.14, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-6.14,
linux-oem-6.14, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-6.14, linux-raspi,
linux-realtime, linux, linux-aws, linux-gkeop, linux-hwe-6.8, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-6.8,
linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.8, linux-nvidia,
linux-nvidia-lowlatency, linux, linux-aws, linux-kvm, linux-lts-xenial, linux-oracle-6.8, linux-realtime-6.14, poppler, python-django, and various linux-* packages).
KDE neon is a Ubuntu-based Linux distribution and live DVD featuring the latest KDE Plasma desktop and other KDE community software. Besides the installable DVD image, the project provides a rapidly-evolving software repository with all the latest KDE software. Two editions of the product are available - a "User" edition, designed for those interested in checking out the latest KDE software as it gets released, and a "Developer's" edition, created as a platform for testing cutting-edge KDE applications.
EasyOS is an experimental Linux distribution which uses many of the technologies and package formats pioneered by Puppy Linux. The distribution features custom container technology called Easy Containers which can run applications or the entire desktop environment in a container. Packages, desktop settings, networking and sharing resources over the network can all be controlled through graphical utilities.
AgarimOS is a desktop Linux distribution based on Void. It comes in several popular desktop flavours, including Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE Plasma, LXQt, MATE and Xfce, all with a limited set of applications in their default states. Like its parent, AgarimOS does not use the systemd service manager, relying instead on the runit init scheme. It employs the XBPS package management system, together with a graphical front-end called OctoXBPS. The distribution also includes various optimisations, custom themes and some interesting software selection, such as the WezTerm terminal emulator, the Neofetch system information utility, the hBlock ad blocker, and the aria2 download tool.
FreedomBox is a Debian-based distribution, primarily used as a server operating system for home users. FreedomBox supports point-and-click settings up a number of services ranging from a calendar or jabber server to a wiki or VPN through a web interface. Firewall, domain names, user accounts, backups, and Btrfs snapshots can also be managed through a simple web-based control centre.
Version:next-20251106 (linux-next)
Released:2025-11-06
Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:
- Front: Python thread safety; Namespace reference counting; Merigraf; Speeding up short reads; Julia 1.12; systemd security.
- Briefs: CHERIoT 1.0; Chromium XSLT; Arm KASLR; Bazzite; Devuan 6.0; Incus 6.18; LXQt 2.3.0; Rust 1.91.0; Quotes; ...
- Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.
Expirion Linux is a Devuan-based desktop distribution which offers LXQt and Xfce desktop editions. The project provides separate releases built from the latest "stable" and "testing" branches of Devuan, with runit and SysV as init system options. Expirion ships with a more recent kernel than Devuan does and it also adds some user-friendly touches, custom themes and wallpapers, as well as productivity applications, such as LibreOffice, Chromium, Firefox, Thunderbird, Audacity, Brasero and VLC.
Mason Freed and Dominik Röttsches have published a document
with a timeline and plans for removing Extensible Stylesheet Language
Transformations (XSLT) from the Chromium project and Chrome
browser:
Chromium has officially deprecated XSLT, including the XSLTProcessor
JavaScript API and the XML stylesheet processing instruction. We
intend to remove support from version 155 (November 17, 2026). The
Firefox and WebKit projects have also indicated plans to remove XSLT
from their browser engines. This document provides some history and
context, explains how we are removing XSLT to make Chrome safer, and
provides a path for migrating before these features are removed from
the browser.
LWN covered the Web
Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) discussion
about XSLT in August.
FuguIta is an OpenBSD live operating system featuring portable workplace, low hardware requirements, additional software, and partial support for Japanese. It strives to provide a live environment which is as close to an installed OpenBSD system as possible. The live environment can be saved to storage and reloaded in a later session, enabling persistent storage and consistent use.
Version
2.3.0 of the Lightweight Qt Desktop Environment (LXQt) has been
released. The highlight of this release is continued improvement in
Wayland support across LXQt components. Rather than offering its own
compositor, the LXQt project takes a modular approach and works with
several Wayland compositors, such as KWin, labwc, and niri.
Linux has many security features and tools that have evolved over
the years to address threats as they emerge and security gaps as they
are discovered. Linux security is all, as Lennart Poettering observed at the All Systems Go! conference held
in Berlin, somewhat random and not a "clean"
design. To many observers, that may also appear to be the case for
systemd; however, Poettering said that he does have a vision for how
all of the security-related pieces of systemd are meant to fit
together. He wanted to use his talk to explain "how the individual
security-related parts of systemd actually fit together and why they
exist in the first place".
Version
1.3 of the Open Container Initiative (OCI) Runtime
Specification has been released. The specification covers the
configuration, execution environment, and lifecycle of containers. The
most notable change in 1.3 is the addition of FreeBSD to the
specification, which the FreeBSD Foundation calls
"a watershed moment for FreeBSD":
The addition of cloud-native container support complements FreeBSD's
already robust virtualization capabilities, particularly the powerful
FreeBSD jails technology that has been a cornerstone of the operating
system for over two decades. In fact, OCI containers on FreeBSD are
implemented using jails as the underlying isolation mechanism,
bringing together the security and resource management benefits of
jails with the portability and ecosystem advantages of OCI-compliant
containers.
Security updates have been issued by Debian (bind9 and gimp), Fedora (chromium, fastapi-cli, fastapi-cloud-cli, gherkin, libnbd, maturin, openapi-python-client, python-annotated-doc, python-cron-converter, python-fastapi, python-inline-snapshot, python-jiter, python-openapi-core, python-platformio, python-pydantic, python-pydantic-core, python-pydantic-extra-types, python-rignore, python-starlette, python-typer, python-typing-inspection, python-uv-build, ruff, rust-astral-tokio-tar, rust-attribute-derive, rust-attribute-derive-macro, rust-collection_literals, rust-get-size-derive2, rust-get-size2, rust-interpolator, rust-jiter, rust-manyhow, rust-manyhow-macros, rust-proc-macro-utils, rust-quote-use, rust-quote-use-macros, rust-regex, rust-regex-automata, rust-reqsign, rust-reqsign-aws-v4, rust-reqsign-command-execute-tokio, rust-reqsign-core, rust-reqsign-file-read-tokio, rust-reqsign-http-send-reqwest, rust-serde_json, rust-speedate, rust-tikv-jemalloc-sys, rust-tikv-jemallocator, and uv), Mageia (golang and libavif), Red Hat (bind9.16, pcs, and qt6-qtsvg), SUSE (colord, ffmpeg, govulncheck-vulndb, jasper, openjpeg, poppler, qatengine, qatlib, runc, sccache, and tiff), and Ubuntu (keystone, libssh, linux-hwe-6.14, linux-nvidia-tegra, linux-nvidia-tegra-5.15, linux-nvidia-tegra-igx,
linux-raspi, runc-app, runc-stable, squid, squid3, and unbound).
openmamba GNU/Linux is a distribution for personal computers that can be used on notebooks, desktops, servers and Raspberry Pi computers. It works as an installable live DVD/USB images, offering one of two desktop environments: KDE Plasma or LXQt. The distribution uses RPM packages managed through the DNF package manager. Software can also be fetched and installed from Flatpak repositories.
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