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Mozilla has announced a new CEO, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo. Prior to becoming CEO, Enzor-DeMeo was general manager of Firefox and led its "vision, strategy, and business performance". He has published a blog post about taking over from interim CEO Laura Chambers, and his plans for Mozilla and Firefox:

As Mozilla moves forward, we will focus on becoming the trusted software company. This is not a slogan. It is a direction that guides how we build and how we grow. It means three things.

• First: Every product we build must give people agency in how it works. Privacy, data use, and AI must be clear and understandable. Controls must be simple. AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off. People should know why a feature works the way it does and what value they get from it.
• Second: our business model must align with trust. We will grow through transparent monetization that people recognize and value.
• Third: Firefox will grow from a browser into a broader ecosystem of trusted software. Firefox will remain our anchor. It will evolve into a modern AI browser and support a portfolio of new and trusted software additions.

Mabox Linux is a Manjaro-based rolling-release distribution. It features the Openbox window manager as its default user interface and provides a welcome screen with access to utilities which add additional software to the operating system.

PikaOS Linux is a Linux distribution based on Debian's cutting-edge "Unstable" branch, optimised for gaming. It is designed to provide out-of-the-box gaming experience, excellent performance with up-to-date drivers and custom-tweaked Linux kernel, and a choice of GNOME or KDE Plasma desktops, with separate editions that use the Hyprland Wayland compositor.

Security Onion is a specialist, security-oriented Linux distribution based on Oracle Linux. It is a free and open platform for threat hunting, enterprise security monitoring and log management. It includes custom interfaces for alerting, dashboards, hunting, PCAP, detections and case management. It also includes other tools, such as osquery (a tool for exploring and monitoring operating system data with SQL queries), CyberChef (a web application for encryption, encoding, compression and data analysis), Elasticsearch (a data search engine), Logstash (a data collection and processing engine), Kibana (a data visualization plugin for Elasticsearch), Suricata (an intrusion detection and prevention system) and Zeek (a software network analysis framework).

Talos is a specialist Linux-based operating system for running Kubernetes, an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling and management of containerised applications. Minimal, immutable and hardened, it does not offer any shell or interactive console; instead, all system management is done via remote Application Programming Interface (API) calls, where messages sent from a client application are protected with mutual Transport Layer Security TLS (mTLS) authentication. Talos also delivers atomic updates, thus maintaining the Linux and Kubernetes versions up-to-date. Talos is developed in the USA by Sidero Labs, Inc.

The final part of the 2025 Maintainers Summit was devoted to the kernel's development process itself. There were two sessions, one on continuity and succession planning, and the traditional discussion, led by Linus Torvalds, on any pain points that the community is experiencing. There was not a lot that developers were unhappy about, and there are now more explicit plans in the works to provide a process should Torvalds abruptly become unable to fill his role.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (binwalk, glib2.0, libgd2, paramiko, and python-apt), Fedora (chromium, python3.13, python3.14, qt6-qtdeclarative, and usd), Mageia (ffmpeg, firefox, nspr, nss, and thunderbird), Oracle (kernel, mysql, mysql:8.0, mysql:8.4, ruby:3.3, wireshark, and xorg-x11-server), Red Hat (expat, mingw-expat, and rsync), SUSE (binutils, curl, glib2, gnutls, go1.24, go1.25, keylime, libmicrohttpd, libssh, openexr, postgresql15, python311, and xkbcomp), and Ubuntu (libsoup3, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-6.8, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-6.8, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-hwe-6.8, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-6.8, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.8, linux-nvidia, linux-nvidia-6.8, linux-nvidia-lowlatency, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-6.8, linux, linux-aws, linux-kvm, linux-lts-xenial, linux-azure, linux-azure-6.14, linux-azure, linux-azure-6.8, linux-azure-fips, linux-fips, linux-fips, linux-aws-fips, linux-gcp-fips, linux-kvm, linux-oem-6.14, linux-raspi, and linux-realtime, linux-realtime-6.8).

DietPi is a Debian-based Linux distribution, primarily developed for single-board computers such as Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi or Odroid. It also supplies builds for 64-bit x86 personal computers and virtual machines, including VMware, VirtualBox, UTM, Hyper-V, Proxmox and Parallels. The base installation of DietPi comes without any desktop, but a desktop option can be activated via the built-in "dietpi-software" program. The distribution ships with a number of menu-driven configuration tools which can be run from the terminal.

MidnightBSD is a FreeBSD-derived operating system. A critical goal of the project is to create an easy-to-use desktop environment with graphical ports management, and system configuration using GNUstep. The vast majority of the operating system will maintain a BSD license. MidnightBSD was forked from FreeBSD 6.1 beta.

TROMjaro is a Manjaro-based Linux distribution with a customised Xfce desktop. Compared to its parent, TROMjaro offers several user-friendly utilities, such as Layout Switcher with six different layouts or Theme Switcher with several accent colours. It also provides various enhancements, including the integration of the Chaotic-AUR repository with pre-built binary packages, a selection of custom wallpapers and icon packs, and extra configuration options in Settings Manager. The distribution comes with support for AppImage files and a heavily-tweaked Firefox browser with custom add-ons.

Rhino Linux is an Ubuntu-based distribution which offers a rolling-release upgrade approach. The distribution uses a customised Xfce desktop environment. Rhino features a custom meta package manager which unifies Deb, Pacstall and Flatpak software management.

Version:next-20251216 (linux-next) Released:2025-12-16

Emmabuntüs is a desktop Linux distribution with editions based on Debian's Stable branch with both the Xfce and LXQt desktop environments available. It strives to be beginner-friendly and reasonably light on resources so that it can be used on older computers. It also includes many modern features, such as large number of pre-configured programs for everyday use, dockbar for launching applications, easy installation of non-free software and media codecs, and quick setup through automated scripts. In addition, this distribution addresses accessibility issues, for both installation and day to day usage, and includes a large set of applications supporting visually impaired people. The distribution supports English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish languages.

CentOS as a group is a community of open source contributors and users which started in 2003 and has been sponsored by Red Hat since 2014. CentOS Linux versions up to CentOS Linux 8 are 100% compatible rebuilds of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, in full compliance with Red Hat's redistribution requirements. In 2020 it was announced CentOS Linux is being discontinued and replaced with CentOS Stream, a developer-focused distribution which acts as a middle-stream between Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Version 8.16.0 of the calibre ebook-management software, released on December 4, includes a "Discuss with AI" feature that can be used to query various AI/LLM services or local models about books, and ask for recommendations on what to read next. The feature has sparked discussion among human users of calibre as well, and more than a few are upset about the intrusion of AI into the software. After much pushback, it looks as though users will get the ability to hide the feature from calibre's user interface, but LLM-driven features are here to stay and more will likely be added over time.

MocaccinoOS is an independently-developed Linux distribution that has its origins in source-based Gentoo Linux and Sabayon Linux. It uses a custom-built package manager called "Luet", which acts as a front-end for container-based software. The distribution's main features are minimalism and small footprint, ease of use, native vanilla Linux kernels, and support for most important cloud technologies. MocaccinoOS is offered in several variants, including live images with GNOME, KDE Plasma, MATE and Xfce desktops, as well as command-line-only "Minimal Desktop" edition.

Vojtěch Polášek has announced an unofficial effort to create a Fedora-based distribution designed for visually impaired users:

My ultimate vision for this project is "NO VOJTUX NEEDED!" because I believe Fedora should eventually be fully accessible out of the box. We aren't there yet, which is where Vojtux comes in to fill the gap. [...]

Key Features:
-Speaks out of the box: When the live desktop is ready, Orca starts automatically. After installation, it is configured so that it starts on the login screen and also after logging in.
-Batteries included: Comes with LIOS , Ocrdesktop, Tesseract, Audacity, and command-line tools like Git and Curl. There are also many preconfigured keyboard shortcuts.

See the repository for instructions on getting the image.

Despite depending heavily on tools, the kernel project often seems to under-invest in the development of those tools. There has been progress in that area, though. At the 2025 Maintainers Summit, Konstantin Ryabitsev, who is (among other things) the author of b4, led a session on ways in which the kernel's tools could be improved to make the development process more efficient and accessible.

Manjaro Linux is a fast, user-friendly, desktop-oriented operating system based on Arch Linux. Key features include intuitive installation process, automatic hardware detection, stable rolling-release model, ability to install multiple kernels, special Bash scripts for managing graphics drivers and extensive desktop configurability. Manjaro Linux offers Xfce as the core desktop options, as well as KDE, GNOME and a minimalist Net edition for more advanced users. Community-supported desktop flavours are also available.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (firefox, grafana, kernel, libsoup3, mysql8.4, and wireshark), Debian (ruby-git, ruby-sidekiq, thunderbird, and vlc), Fedora (apptainer, chromium, firefox, golangci-lint, libpng, and xkbcomp), Mageia (golang), SUSE (binutils, chromium, firefox, gegl, go1.25, govulncheck-vulndb, hauler, kernel, keylime, libpng12, pgadmin4, postgresql16, python, python-Django, python-django, python3, python311, rhino, thunderbird, unbound, and xkbcomp), and Ubuntu (usbmuxd).