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The 6.19-rc2 kernel prepatch is out for testing. "I obviously expect next week to be even quieter, with people being distracted by the holidays. So let's all enjoy taking a little break, but maybe break the boredom with some early rc testing?"

Version:6.19-rc2 (mainline) Released:2025-12-21 Source:linux-6.19-rc2.tar.gz Patch:full (incremental)

Qubes OS is a free and open-source, security-oriented operating system for single-user desktop computing. Qubes OS leverages Xen-based virtualization to allow for the creation and management of isolated compartments called qubes. These qubes are implemented as virtual machines (VMs). This allows each component of the operating system to be isolated from other pieces, preventing compromises from spreading or information from leaking.

Gentoo Linux is a versatile and fast, completely free Linux distribution geared towards developers and network professionals. Unlike other distros, Gentoo Linux has an advanced package management system called Portage. Portage is a true ports system in the tradition of BSD ports, but is Python-based and sports a number of advanced features including dependencies, fine-grained package management, "fake" (OpenBSD-style) installs, safe unmerging, system profiles, virtual packages, config file management, and more.

The 2025 election for members of the Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board has concluded; the winners are Greg Kroah-Hartman, Steven Rostedt, Julia Lawall, David Hildenbrand, and Ted Ts'o.

Synex is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Debian's "Stable" branch, developed with the official Debian Live Build tool. It offers four separate desktop options with GNOME, LXDE, KDE Plasma and Xfce, all of which are composed of a rather frugal set of applications in its default state, without any development tools or offices suites. Some of the distribution's main features include Calamares installer with support for both BIOS and UEFI, CUPS integration for printing and network support, out-of-the box support for Flatpak applications, official NVIDIA driver installation assistant with support for both X11 and Wayland, and additional repositories containing Microsoft Edge, OnlyOffice and Zabbix.

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