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Linus has released 7.0-rc1 and closed the merge window for this development cycle. "You all know the drill by now: two weeks have passed, and the kernel merge window is closed."

Version:7.0-rc1 (mainline) Released:2026-02-22 Source:linux-7.0-rc1.tar.gz Patch:full

OmegaLinux is an Arch-based, rolling-release Linux distribution featuring the lightweight LXDE desktop. It is suitable for installation on older computers with as little as 1 GB of memory. OmegaLinux was originally based on Lubuntu, but it was rebuilt on top of an Arch Linux base in February 2026.

MagOS Linux is a Russian desktop-oriented distribution based on ROSA, a distribution that was forked from Mandriva Linux in 2011. It uses the RPM package management. MagOS Linux comes with KDE Plasma desktop by default, but it also ships the lightweight LXQt desktop for older and low-specification computers. Besides the standard upstream packages from ROSA, the project also provides its own RPM package repository (with various network and NVIDIA display drivers), as well as separate modules (in XZM format) with extra hardware drivers, server tools, MATE desktop, Wine emulator, Java software and additional web browsers, including Chromium and Yandex.

Lakka is a lightweight Linux distribution that transforms a small computer into a full blown game console. The distribution is based on LibreELEC and runs the RetroArch console emulator. Lakka is capable of running on a variety of hardware, including personal computers, Raspberry Pi boards and WeTek Play devices.

FreeBSD is a UNIX-like operating system for the i386, amd64, IA-64, arm, MIPS, powerpc, ppc64, PC-98 and UltraSPARC platforms based on U.C. Berkeley's "4.4BSD-Lite" release, with some "4.4BSD-Lite2" enhancements. It is also based indirectly on William Jolitz's port of U.C. Berkeley's "Net/2" to the i386, known as "386BSD", though very little of the 386BSD code remains. FreeBSD is used by companies, Internet Service Providers, researchers, computer professionals, students and home users all over the world in their work, education and recreation. FreeBSD comes with over 20,000 packages (pre-compiled software that is bundled for easy installation), covering a wide range of areas: from server software, databases and web servers, to desktop software, games, web browsers and business software - all free and easy to install.

Argent Linux is a Gentoo-based Linux distribution featuring the KDE Plasma desktop and designed for workstations and servers. It uses the systemd service manager which, as it is not available in the upstream Gentoo repositories, the project itself provides in the form of binary packages. The distribution favours the epkg package manager, a highly simplistic wrapper over portage, specially designed for precompiled binaries. Argent Linux maintains a semi-rolling release model, with a stable branch and a development (testing) branch.

The closed-source chat platform Discord announced on February 9 that it would soon require some users to verify their ages in order to access some content — although the company quickly added that the "vast majority" of users would not have to. That reassurance has to contend with the fact that the UK and other countries are implementing increasingly strict age requirements for social media. Discord's age verification would be done with an AI age-judging model or with a government photo ID. A surprising number of open-source projects use Discord for support or project communications, and some of those projects are now looking for open-source alternatives. Mastodon, for example, has moved discussion to Zulip. There are some alternatives out there, all with their own pros and cons, that communities may want to consider if they want to switch away from Discord.

Version:next-20260220 (linux-next) Released:2026-02-20

Dianne Skoll, creator and maintainer of the command-line calendar and alarm program Remind, has announced the release of The Book of Remind. As the name suggests, it is a step-by-step guide to learning how to use Remind, and a useful supplement to the extensive remind(1) man page. The book is free to download.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (grafana), Debian (gegl, inetutils, libvpx, nova, and python-django), Fedora (azure-cli, chromium, microcode_ctl, python-azure-core, python3.14, and roundcubemail), Red Hat (grafana and osbuild-composer), SUSE (apptainer, dnsdist, istioctl, libsoup, openCryptoki, python-nltk, python311, python313, rclone, and thunderbird), and Ubuntu (libvpx, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.4, linux-azure-fips, and linux-intel-iotg).

Fluff Linux is an Arch-based distribution featuring a standard KDE Plasma desktop. It is developed by FluffNet, with a focus on delivering a stable, high-performance and hassle-free computing experience.

AUSTRUMI (Austrum Latvijas Linukss) is a bootable live Linux distribution based on Slackware Linux. It requires limited system resources and can run on any Intel-compatible system with a CD-ROM installed. The entire operating system and all of the applications run from RAM, making AUSTRUMI a fast system and allowing the boot medium to be removed after the operating system starts.

TrueNAS CORE (previously known as FreeNAS) is a free and Open Source Network-Attached Storage (NAS) operating system that supports file, block and object storage. TrueNAS CORE is FreeBSD based and is a community-supported branch of the TrueNAS project, sponsored by iXsystems. It also has a commercial branch called TrueNAS Enterprise and a free and HyperConverged storage solution called TrueNAS SCALE. The TrueNAS SCALE branch is based on the Debian Linux distribution.

Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the 6.19.3, 6.18.13, 6.12.74, 6.6.127, 6.1.164, 5.15.201, and 5.10.251 stable kernels. As usual, each includes important fixes and users are advised to upgrade.

Version:6.19.3 (stable) Released:2026-02-19 Source:linux-6.19.3.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.19.3.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.19.3

Version:6.18.13 (longterm) Released:2026-02-19 Source:linux-6.18.13.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.18.13.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.18.13

Version:6.18.13 (stable) Released:2026-02-19 Source:linux-6.18.13.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.18.13.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.18.13

Version:6.12.74 (longterm) Released:2026-02-19 Source:linux-6.12.74.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.12.74.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.12.74

Version:6.6.127 (longterm) Released:2026-02-19 Source:linux-6.6.127.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.6.127.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.6.127