Over a year after the 25 “Shockworm” release, Netrunner, a Debian-based desktop Linux distro built around KDE Plasma, has rolled out the new 26 “Twilight” version based on Debian 13 “Trixie”.
However, while Debian 13 ships with Linux kernel 6.12 by default, Netrunner 26 moves to Linux 6.16. The release also adopts Plasma 6.3 (6.3.6), KDE Frameworks 6.13, Qt 6.8.2, and KDE Apps 25.04.3.
What’s more interesting, Netrunner says Plasma X11 sessions will use XLibre X server, a notable platform-level change in this release.
On the multimedia side, Netrunner 26 ships with PipeWire and WirePlumber by default and includes power-profiles-daemon for dynamic performance selection. The release improves support for newer AMD and Intel GPUs, as well as sound and wireless hardware.
Moreover, Netrunner has updated several of its own components for this release. These include Samba-mounter, rewritten for Qt 6 and PolicyKit; refreshed artwork with a new SDDM theme and updated Plasma 6 themes; and an About-extended KCM module now fully compatible with Qt 6 and KDE Frameworks 6.
Preinstalled applications include Firefox 140.7 ESR, Thunderbird 140.6 ESR, LibreOffice 25.2.3, VLC 3.0.23, VirtualBox 7.2.6, Inkscape 1.4, GIMP 3.0.4, and Kdenlive 24.12.3. The release also adds Stacher7, a graphical interface for yt-dlp.
Netrunner 26 also inherits several broader changes from Debian 13. These include hardening against ROP and COP/JOP attacks on amd64 and arm64 systems, support for spell-checking in Qt WebEngine browsers and BDIC Binary Hunspell Dictionary, and APT’s shift from the legacy .list format to the newer .sources deb822 format. The apt modernize-sources tool automates this transition.
Additionally, /tmp is now stored in tmpfs, meaning it resides in RAM and is cleaned more frequently. The announcement also notes that users may encounter dpkg warnings about being unable to delete old directories.
Finally, keep in mind that the Plasma desktop comes with slight modifications that may not be to everyone’s liking if you’re expecting the typical KDE experience. Furthermore, I think the added custom cursor is rather unfortunate.
Netrunner 26 “Twilight” ISO images are available now from the project’s download page. For more details, see the announcement.
