Back in November Steam on Linux use hit an all-time high at 3.2%. With the still increasing popularity around the Steam Deck powered by the Arch Linux based SteamOS, Linux gaming continuing to grow thanks to Steam Play (Proton), and excitement around the upcoming Steam Frame and Steam Machine hardware, the Linux gaming outlook continues to be positive. The Steam Survey results for December 2025 are out tonight and with just a tiny dip to Linux use...

Released back in November was Devuan 6.0 for Debian 13 without systemd dependence in order to provide "init freedom" with letting users instead opt for SysVinit, OpenRC, or Runit as the init system. Devuan 6.1 is out today as the newest stable point release...

It’s fair to say that 2025 delivered plenty of wins for Ubuntu and the wider Linux ecosystem. Wayland is no longer “on the way”, but settled in and feeling comfortable (for most of us); gaming on Linux is practically mainstream at this point (thanks to Valve); and Ubuntu’s desktop team continued to think big with app/tooling changes, encryption focus, and more. Still, one shouldn’t lose sight of how far things have come already. In a chronically online world, attention is forever fixated on what’s new, what’s next, and (outrage industrial complex) what is the absolute worst. Mindfulness isn’t a meme; […]

You're reading What Do You Want to See From Ubuntu in 2026?, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Devuan GNU+Linux is a Linux distribution forked from Debian in 2015. The project's primary goal is to provide a variant of Debian without the complexities and dependencies of systemd, an init system and services manager originally developed by Red Hat and later adopted by most other Linux distributions. Devuan's initial beta release was made available in April 2016, together with an upgrade path from Debian 7.0 "Wheezy" and a possibility to switch to Devuan from Debian 8.0 "Jessie". The distribution adopted Xfce as its default desktop.

As a wonderful New Year surprise, there's good momentum on NVIDIA graphics support for the BeOS-inspired Haiku open-source operating system...

Alien-OS is a German Linux distribution based on Debian's latest "Stable" release, with components borrowed from MX Linux. It uses the Regolith Desktop Environment which combines i3 and Sway window managers into a single tiling, keyboard-driven user interface. The distribution's main features include a choice of systemd or SysV init systems, the integrated MX-Tools configuration utility, the Liquorix Linux kernel for enhanced performance in gaming and multimedia applications, over 20 pre-installed themes, and support for OEM installations.

d77void GNU/Linux is a Void-based Linux distribution created to demonstrate the capabilities of Void's tools, such as void-mklive and void-packages. Originally initiated as a Void respin with the Fluxbox window manager, the project has evolved to offer a wide range of window manager, Wayland compositor and desktop environment options, including Awesome, bspwm, Cosmic, dwm, Fluxbox, herbstluftwm, Hyprland, i3wm, JWM, labwc, LeftWM, LXQt, Niri, Openbox, Qtile, River, Sway, Wayfire and Xfce. The distribution can be installed to a hard disc with the text-mode d77void-installer.

After looking yesterday at the most viewed Linux hardware reviews and benchmarks of 2025, today's look is at the most popular open-source/Linux news of the past year. There were 3,286 original news articles on Phoronix during 2025 written by your's truly, here's a look back at what excited readers the most over these past twelve months...

KDE Linux is a user-focused, general-purpose Linux distribution. It is built by KDE and it is meant to showcase the best implementation of everything KDE has to offer, using the most advanced technologies. The distribution's base packages come from Arch Linux, while everything else is either compiled by the kde-builder tool or included as Flatpak packages. KDE Linux does not come with any traditional package manager, but supports installing Flatpak, Snap or AppImage applications. As it has an immutable base, system updates involve replacing the operating system image with an entirely new one.

EN-OS is an Arch Linux-based distribution with a customised KDE Plasma as the preferred desktop and a large range of KDE-centric software, including the Calligra office suite and KDE Gear set of applications. Designed for the desktop, it also includes the Calamares system installer and a good selection of popular applications for work, multimedia and development.

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.

The ReactOS free software project is turning 30 this year and its "open-source Windows" OS ambitions remain. They are starting out this year with another "major step" towards Windows NT 6.0 compatibility...

Arch Linux is an independently developed, x86_64-optimised Linux distribution targeted at competent Linux users. It uses 'pacman', its home-grown package manager, to provide updates to the latest software applications with full dependency tracking. Operating on a rolling release system, Arch can be installed from a CD image or via an FTP server. The default install provides a solid base that enables users to create a custom installation. In addition, the Arch Build System (ABS) provides a way to easily build new packages, modify the configuration of stock packages, and share these packages with other users via the Arch Linux user repository.

For fans of the IceWM X11 window manager, the project kicked off 2026 by releasing IceWM 4.0...

Side GNU/Linux is an independently-developed lightweight Linux distribution featuring the PiSi package manager. It uses the Simple Desktop Environment (SDE, a fork of LXDE) together with the Openbox window manager and the text-mode Lynx web browser. The distribution, designed for more experienced Linux users, offers a choice between a simple text-mode system installer and the graphical Calamares installation program.

Kicking off the new year for Linux gaming and cross-platform gaming at large is the release of the SDL 3.4 library. SDL is part of the Steam runtime and continues to be widely-used for abstracting software/hardware for creating more portable games and other applications...

Peropesis (personal operating system) is a small-scale, minimalist, command-line-based Linux operating system. It's an incomplete system, but it's constantly being improved. Also, it is a free operating system created from free software, mostly distributed under the GNU GPL or BSD licenses.

Merged to Linux Git on New Year's Eve was a fix in the form of a code revert for broken MediaTek WiFi on the in-development Linux 6.19 kernel...

With Linux 6.19 aging AMD GCN 1.0 and GCN 1.1 GPUs switched the default kernel driver used to provide for much better performance, RADV Vulkan support out-of-the-box, and other improvements compared to using the legacy Radeon DRM kernel driver. For 2026, Timur Kristóf of Valve's Linux graphics team has more improvements still planned to enhance these older AMD graphics cards on Linux...

Dr.Parted Live is a bootable GNU/Linux distribution based on Debian's "Testing" branch. It is a live image featuring a lightweight Openbox window manager and useful applications for disc partitioning as well as data backup, restore and recovery.

Kiro is an Arch Linux-based distribution with the goal of being an intuitive and customisable ISO image builder. It provides a simple way to build a custom Arch-based installation medium with a choice of packages, settings and scripts. Kiro uses the Xfce desktops, includes the Calamares system installer, and has a modular structure.

Calam Arch Installer is an Arch-based Linux distribution created to facilitate the installation of an Arch Linux system to a hard disk. It is also a full-featured live Linux system with Xfce as the preferred desktop. The Calamares system installer offers a choice of several popular desktop environments and window managers, including Budgie, Cinnamon, Deepin, GNOME, i3, KDE Plasma, MATE, Openbox and Xfce. The distribution also offers support for both BIOS and UEFI boot, as well as hard disk encryption with LUKS.

I roundup a crop of December's smaller Linux app releases, including the Clapper media player, QEMU virtualisation tool, Scribus DTP and ONLYOFFICE.

You're reading Linux App Release Roundup (December 2025), a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

This looks to be a wrap on 2025, Happy New Year to all the Phoronix readers over the past 21+ years. This year on Phoronix there were 226 original Linux hardware reviews and featured benchmark articles written by your's truly. Plus another 3,286 original open-source/Linux software and hardware news articles this calendar year. Here were the big topics of 2025 for the featured Linux hardware reviews and benchmark articles...