As we’re about to say goodbye to 2025, I decided to look back at the year through the lens of Linux and open source, and recall for our readers the most significant developments it brought to the ecosystem. I’ll start with something fundamental, of course: the Linux kernel.
A New LTS Release of the Linux Kernel
In 2025, a new long-term support (LTS) release of the Linux kernel, version 6.18, was released. For reference, the previous LTS release was 6.12, which arrived in November 2024. They are important to the entire Linux ecosystem for a simple reason – to provide long-term stability and security fixes, serving as reliable foundations for distributions, servers, and devices that require years of maintenance.
Unfortunately, a promising new file system, Bcachefs, was dropped from the Linux kernel in version 6.17 after a disagreement between Linus Torvalds and its lead developer, Kent Overstreet. Still, there is hope that the two will resolve their differences in 2026 and that Bcachefs will return in a future kernel release.
Moreover, the Linux kernel is set to drop support for legacy i486 and early 586 (Pentium-era) CPUs, raising the minimum x86 requirement and removing related compatibility code to simplify maintenance and reduce code complexity. For context, the Linux kernel now exceeds 40 million lines of code.
Xorg’s Long Goodbye Reached Its Peak in 2025
This topic has been debated for years, but in 2025, the Linux ecosystem finally took decisive steps toward replacing Xorg. After reliably serving the community for more than two decades, Xorg is now being replaced by Wayland, a more modern and secure display server protocol.
Nearly all major Linux distributions have announced plans to drop Xorg support in future releases. More significantly, the leading desktop environments have confirmed that their 2026 versions will no longer support Xorg at all. GNOME 50, expected in mid-March, will ship without Xorg support, and KDE Plasma 6.8, planned for late 2026, is also set to go fully Wayland, bringing more than 20 years of X11 desktop sessions to an end.
As expected, projects aimed at extending the life of X11 have started to appear. The most notable so far is the new XLibre Xserver (as we also have a new initiative launched just a few days ago, Phoenix). Another promising effort is Wayback, which has already reached version 0.3 and aims to serve as a bridge for users who still depend on applications that haven’t been adapted for Wayland.
However, despite this, it’s increasingly clear that 2026 will likely be the year when the usability of the classic Xorg stack will be reduced to a handful of niche cases. Despite the frustration this shift has caused for many users, I personally see it as a positive development.
Mozilla Firefox and the Search for a Clear Direction
I decided to dedicate a separate section to Mozilla Firefox because a web browser is a core component of any desktop system, and Firefox remains the de facto standard on Linux, shipping by default with most distributions.
In 2025, Mozilla introduced Firefox’s first-ever Terms of Use, sparking significant backlash. Many users viewed it as a step toward greater advertiser influence and potential misuse of user data. Then, in May, Mozilla shut down two of its services, Pocket and Fakespot, sending a clear signal that its financial position is under strain and that it is actively cutting costs.
More recently, newly appointed CEO Anthony Enzor-DeMeo said that plans are underway for Firefox to evolve into a modern AI-powered browser—an announcement that, unsurprisingly, was met with widespread skepticism across the open-source community.
One thing is clear: Firefox is trying to chart a new course to secure its financial future. However, navigating that shift while preserving the trust of its long-standing user base, especially in light of several controversial decisions made over the past year, will be far from easy.
‘End of 10’ Campaign
End of 10 emerged as a community-driven initiative encouraging users to leave Windows 10 before its end-of-support date on October 14, 2025, and switch to Linux instead. It argues that Linux is a practical alternative that keeps these machines useful, secure, and out of landfills.
The idea is straightforward: when Windows 10 reaches the end of life, millions of still-working PCs will no longer receive security updates unless users upgrade to Windows 11, which has strict hardware requirements that many older systems cannot meet.
However, many Linux distros embraced the idea with almost excessive enthusiasm, seeing it as a golden opportunity to grow their user base. Their social media accounts were flooded with posts explaining why they are the best alternative. To avoid the inevitable backlash from devoted fans, I won’t name names, but personally, the whole episode left me with a slightly bitter aftertaste.
Did the campaign achieve its goals? That’s hard to say, but probably not. There’s no clear evidence of a mass exodus from Windows. Still, some results are difficult to dismiss. Zorin OS, for example, reported 1 million downloads of the new version 18 in its first month after release, with 78% coming from Windows users.
Top Linux Releases of 2025
This part of the article could easily be seen as highly subjective, so I chose to approach it differently. If you’re looking for lists like “The 10 best…,” there are plenty of other sites where you can find such. Here, I’ll focus on just two names that stand clearly above the rest, and then allow myself to broaden the scope slightly.
The first is Debian 13 “Trixie.” It is the undisputed benchmark, one against which many others measure themselves, and it serves as the foundation for a vast number of downstream projects. Debian’s importance to open source is fundamental, as it largely sets the direction the Linux ecosystem will follow over the next two years.
The second is Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10. In the enterprise and server space, RHEL and its derivatives, most notably AlmaLinux 10 and Rocky Linux 10, both released in 2025, remain the primary platforms powering a significant share of business infrastructure.
openSUSE Leap 16, released in early October, could reasonably be considered a third contender. However, despite its clear strengths as a general-purpose Linux distribution, the cute green chameleon still lags behind the two names above in overall adoption and reach.
Finally, since the distributions mentioned above largely cover the server side, I’ll limit myself to just two names on the desktop front: LMDE 7 and Fedora 43. Understandably, there’s no practical way to include the 2025 releases of rolling names such as Arch and Tumbleweed, but they remain the benchmarks in the rolling niche.
Linux as a Gaming Platform Is No Longer a Niche
For many years, gaming on Linux felt almost impossible, or at best a niche hobby with mixed results for die-hard enthusiasts. That’s no longer true, and Steam deserves much of the credit.
After Linux users on the platform reached 2% in 2024, that share climbed to 3% just a year later, in 2025. That one percentage point may sound small, but let me tell you: it took Linux three years to grow from 1% to 2%. Reaching the next percent in a single year shows the pace has sharply accelerated, and the trend shows no sign of slowing down.
Personally, when I’m not writing articles, I often relax with some of my favorite titles, most of which are Windows-exclusive. And I can confidently say they run smoothly without any issues. Thanks to Valve, Proton, and Wine, the long-standing myth that Linux isn’t suitable for gaming can finally be put to rest.
2025 Standout Open-Source Releases
Okay, this section will be the most challenging for me, because it either has to be nearly endless or I risk being (rightfully) accused of leaving out many releases that deserve inclusion. With that caveat in mind, here is my shortlist.
The first stable release of COSMIC can be named the most significant event in desktop Linux for 2025. In the same space, the releases of KDE Plasma 6.5 and Cinnamon 6.6 also deserve mention.
On the client side, there were indeed thousands of software releases, but major milestones such as GIMP 3.0, VirtualBox 7.2, and Blender 5.0 stood out. But it’s not all desktop Linux. Under the hood, fundamental components such as the APT 3.0 and RPM 6.0 package managers debuted this year, plus OpenSSH 10, QEMU 10, PipeWire 1.4, FFmpeg 8.0, and many others deserving a clear mention as well.
For developers, the year delivered major releases such as Python 3.14, PHP 8.5, PostgreSQL 18, Valkey 9.0, etc. In the self-hosting space, where Linux is firmly the dominant platform, the release of Immich 2.0‘s first stable version stands out.
Instead of a Conclusion, Some Final Thoughts
So, there are clearly many other moments that could have been included here. A few that come to mind right away are Microsoft open-sourcing WSL, CachyOS climbing to the top of DistroWatch’s ranking (however irrelevant that may be), Canonical extending Ubuntu LTS support to 15 years, and many, many others.
Trying to cover everything, though, would turn this into a book rather than an article. With that in mind, I hope what’s been presented here helps highlight the most important FOSS developments of 2025, even if it only scratches the surface of a much broader and more active ecosystem.
And one more thing. 2025 wasn’t the year of Linux on the desktop either. But does that really matter to you or me? I don’t think it does. What does matter is that you took the time to read this piece, even as preparations for welcoming 2026 are in full swing. Focus on those now, I’ll be here next year. And here’s to a happy 2026!
