Welcome to the final week of the year with Linuxiac’s 52nd Weekly Roundup, your go-to source for everything Linux and open source. Here are the top Linux and FOSS highlights from December 22 to 28.
Linux Distributions
This week brought four important updates in the Linux world, and I’ve covered each one in the articles below.
- Parrot OS 7.0 Released With KDE Plasma 6, Wayland, and Debian 13 Base
- elementary OS 8.1 Is Out With Secure Session Now Default
- Qubes OS 4.3 Brings Fedora 42, Debian 13, and Whonix 18 Templates
- postmarketOS 25.12 Brings GNOME 49, Plasma Mobile 6.5, and Phosh 0.51
Software Updates
Apart from the distro releases, here’s a quick summary of the latest open-source software updates that made the news.
- Fish Shell 4.3 Released With Scripting and Terminal Improvements
- OpenMediaVault 8 NAS Launches With Debian 13 Upgrade
- Inkscape 1.4.3 Delivers 124 Bug and Crash Fixes in Major Maintenance Update
- QEMU 10.2 Expands RISC-V, PowerPC, and s390x Emulation Capabilities
- Kitty Terminal 0.45 Released With New Keyboard-First File Selector Kitten
- GStreamer 1.26.10 Brings Fixes for FLAC Opus and Matroska Handling
- Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0.3 Released With Smarter Networking and Faster Writes
- Wayback 0.3 Preview Arrives With Fedora and Alpine Availability
- Pinta 3.1 Image Editor Brings New Grid, Selection Tools, and More
- Clapper 0.10 Media Player Released With Enhancer Plugin System Improvements
- Ruby 4.0 Released With Ruby Box Isolation and New ZJIT Compiler
- Lua 5.5 Released With Incremental Garbage Collection and Compact Arrays
- FreshRSS 1.28 Feed Aggregator Released With New Sorting Options
Must-Reads You Can’t Miss
There was also some notable news from the Linux and FOSS community this week. Here are the highlights.
- Winux Tries to Mimic Windows While Staying Fully Linux
- CachyOS Plans New Server Edition With Hardened Defaults
- Arch Linux Website Hit by DDoS and Temporarily Limited to IPv6
- Debian Officially Welcomes Loong64 as a Supported Architecture
- GitHub Takes Down Rockchip MPP Repository After FFmpeg Copyright Claim
- QNX Introduces a Self-Hosted Developer Desktop
- Phoenix Emerges as a Modern X Server Written From Scratch in Zig
- Postgresus Renamed to Databasus as Backup Tool Expands Beyond PostgreSQL
- QEMU and FFmpeg Founder Introduces Micro QuickJS JavaScript Engine
- Docker Update Tool Watchtower Reaches End of Maintenance
Tutorials That Make a Difference
And finally, I wrote a short guide showing how, with a simple setting change, you can help KDE developers make better decisions about Plasma improvements.
That’s all for this week. If you missed our previous wrap-up from Week 51 of 2025 (Dec 15–21), you can catch up here, where you’ll find Linux Mint 22.3 “Zena” Beta, Rhino Linux 2025.4, DietPi 9.20, Systemd 259, VLC 3.0.23, MPV 0.41, NVIDIA Linux Driver 590.48, Flatpak 1.16.2, Incus 6.20, Kodi 22 Preview, OpenShot 3.4, OpenZFS 2.4, Debian Gets Its Own PPA-Like System, MIT and Apache 2.0 Lead Open Source Licensing in 2025, Mageia Linux 10 Enters Alpha Phase, and more.
Be sure to keep an eye on Linuxiac throughout the coming year for the latest updates from the Linux and open-source world.
And last but definitely not least, have a great week ahead as we prepare to welcome 2026, so may it bring you warmth, kindness, hope, and time with the people you love.
