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Xray_OS is an Arch-based Linux distribution focused on innovation, creativity, usability and software development. It comes with KDE Plasma as its preferred desktop. Some of the other interesting features of the distribution include a custom system installer, a welcome application called Tolitica with some useful options, smart GPU detection which removes unused drivers during installation, an AUR helper for downloading and building software packages on the fly, and original wallpapers created specifically for Xray_OS.

Chimera Linux is an independent distribution which uses an unusual combination of technologies behind the scenes. Chimera Linux uses BSD userland command line tools, the Clang/LLVM compiler toolchain, Dinit for service management, and APK for package management. Chimera Linux strives to keep the design simple while still providing the experience and features most users want, such as multiple desktop environments, Flatpak support, a graphical package manager, and easy access to desktop configuration tools. Chimera Linux does not have a system installer, instead providing manual command line instructions to bootstrap the operating system from a live environment.

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.

BRGV-OS is a rolling-release Linux distribution based on Void and featuring a customised GNOME desktop with variety of unique themes. It offers out-of-the-box support for English and Romanian languages. The project aims to facilitate developers, researchers and users to transition from Windows or macOS to Linux by maintaining familiar operational habits and workflows. BRGV-OS was originally created for Banca de Resurse Genetice Vegetale (BRGV), a gene bank research institute in Suceava, Romania, and is now also available to the general public.

Quirinux is a Devuan-based Linux distribution designed for the development of animated films. The project provides tools to create an animated film using various common techniques (traditional, digital, cut-out, CGI-3D, stop motion, motion graphics) using open-source software. The distribution uses the Xfce desktop and its main features include ease of installation with the Calamares system installer, GIMP image editor that comes with a configurator tool and extra plugins, and choice of themes and desktop layouts.

The FreeBSD Foundation has a blog post about the progress it has made in 2025 on the Laptop Support & Usability Project for FreeBSD. The foundation committed $750,000 to the project in 2025 and has made progress on graphics drivers, Wi-Fi 4 and 5 support, audio improvements, sleep states, and more.

The installer for FreeBSD has gained a couple of new features that benefit laptop users. In 15.0 the installer now supports downloading and installing firmware packages after the FreeBSD base system installation is complete. Coming in 15.1 it will be possible to install the KDE graphical desktop environment during the installation process. Grateful thanks to Bjoern Zeeb and Alfonso Siciliano respectively. [...]

The project continues into 2026 with a similar sized investment and scope. Key targets include completing work on sleep states (modern standby and hibernate), adding support for graphics drivers up to Linux 6.18, Wi-Fi 6 support, USB4 and Thunderbolt support, HDMI improvements, UVC webcam support, and Bluetooth improvements.

A substantial testing program will also start in January, aiming to test all the functionality together across a range of hardware. Community testers are very welcome to help out, the Foundation will release a blog post and send an invite to help to the Desktop mailing list some time in January 2026.

The BPF verifier is complicated. It needs to check every possible path that a BPF program's execution could take. The fact that its determination of whether a BPF program is safe is based on the whole lifetime of the program, instead of simple local factors, means that the cause of a verification failure is not always obvious. Ihor Solodrai and Jordan Rome gave a presentation (slides) at the 2025 Linux Plumbers Conference in Tokyo about the BPF verifier visualizer that they have been building to make diagnosing verification failures easier.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (roundcube), Fedora (checkpointctl, containernetworking-plugins, mingw-libpng, NetworkManager, php, python3-docs, python3.13, and webkitgtk), Oracle (kernel, keylime, and libssh), and SUSE (apache2, clair, colord, flannel, gnutls, golang-github-prometheus-alertmanager, grafana, grub2, helm, ImageMagick, libpng16, netty, openssl-3, postgresql13, postgresql14, postgresql15, python36, salt, uyuni-tools, and venv-salt-minion).

Bluestar Linux is a GNU/Linux distribution that is based on Arch Linux. The Bluestar distribution features up to date packages, a full range of desktop and multimedia software in the default installation and a live desktop DVD.

DESERT OS Linux is a Russian desktop Linux distribution based on Ubuntu and featuring the Xfce desktop. It supports Pacstall, a package manager inspired by Arch's AUR and capable of creating native Ubuntu DEB packages from source and binary packages, git repositories, AppImage apps, release artifacts and non-Ubuntu DEB packages. The distribution also offers out-of-the box support for Flatpak packages.

Linux Mint is an Ubuntu-based distribution whose goal is to provide a classic desktop experience with many convenient, custom tools and optional out-of-the-box multimedia support. It also adds a custom desktop and menus, several unique configuration tools, and a web-based package installation interface. Linux Mint is compatible with Ubuntu software repositories. Besides its Ubuntu-based flavour, the project also produces a separate "Debian" edition (called LMDE), based on the latest stable Debian version.

XCP-ng is a CentOS-based Linux server distribution designed to be a high-performance enterprise-level virtualization platform that uses Xen, a free and open-source hypervisor that allows multiple computer operating systems to execute on the same computer hardware concurrently. XCP-ng stands for Xen Cloud Platform - next generation, it is the modern successor to XCP, initially created as an open-source version of Citrix XenServer back in 2010. XCP-ng is a secure platform to run any kind of virtualization workload, while being managed by a central administration console called Xen Orchestra (XO).

Linuxfx (also known as Winux or Wubuntu) is a Brazilian Linux distribution based on Ubuntu. It ships with an intuitive Cinnamon desktop user interface designed to facilitate migration of users from Windows. It includes a video management system called Sentinela, a computer vision software with video analytics and software for access control (facial recognition and automatic number plate recognition), object detection, gender, age and mood detection. Other features of the distribution include a new personal assistant, a WX theme for desktop and system applications, and compatibility with software written for Windows (.exe and .msi) through a Wine port. Following the release of Linuxfx 10.6 the distribution became a commercial offering.

Version:next-20251219 (linux-next) Released:2025-12-19

Unraid OS is a Linux-based commercial operating system designed to provide an easy-to-use and flexible platform for building and managing a Network-Attached Storage (NAS). Some of Unraid's main features include the ability to mix and match drives of different sizes, an easy-to-use web interface for managing storage, virtual machines and Docker containers, protection to safeguard against drive failures, ability to expand the storage by adding more drives.

TUXEDO OS is an Ubuntu-based distribution developed in Germany by TUXEDO Computers GmbH, designed and optimised for the company's own range of Linux-friendly personal computers and notebooks. The distribution uses KDE Plasma as the preferred desktop. Some of the differences between Ubuntu and TUXEDO OS include custom boot menu, the TUXEDO Control Centre, Calamares installer, availability of the Lutris open gaming platform, preference for the PipeWire audio daemon (over PulseAudio), removal of Ubuntu's snap daemon and snap packages, and various other tweaks and enhancements.

Stephen Rothwell, who has maintained the kernel's linux-next integration tree from its inception, has announced his retirement from that role:

I will be stepping down as Linux-Next maintainer on Jan 16, 2026. Mark Brown has generously volunteered to take up the challenge. He has helped in the past filling in when I have been unavailable, so hopefully knows what he is getting in to. I hope you will all treat him with the same (or better) level of respect that I have received.

It has been a long but mostly interesting task and I hope it has been helpful to others. It seems a long time since I read Andrew Morton's "I have a dream" email and decided that I could help out there - little did I know what I was heading for.

Over the last two decades or so, the kernel's development process has evolved from an unorganized mess with irregular releases to a smooth machine with a new release every nine or ten weeks. That would not have happened without linux-next; thanks are due to Stephen for helping to make the current process possible.

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.

Flatcar Container Linux is a container-optimized operating system based on Gentoo Linux. It is a minimal operating system image which includes only the tools needed to run containers and it supports all of the popular methods for running containers. The distribution ships an immutable filesystem and includes automatic atomic updates. Flatcar Container Linux runs on most cloud providers, virtualization platforms and bare metal servers.

Linus Torvalds is famously averse to presenting prepared talks, but the wider community is always interested in what he has to say about the condition of the Linux kernel. So, for some time now, his appearances have been in the form of an informal conversation with Dirk Hohndel. At the 2025 Open Source Summit Japan, the pair followed that tradition for the 29th time. Topics covered include the state of the development process, what Torvalds actually does, and how machine-learning tools might fit into the kernel project.