Grml, a Debian-based live Linux system focused on system administrators, has released version 2026.09, code-named “Hättiwaritätti.” The release is built from Debian Testing “Forky” packages and includes Linux kernel 7.1.8.
Unlike typical desktop distributions, Grml is designed as a portable live environment for troubleshooting, repairing, and maintaining Linux systems. It boots directly from USB media without installation and focuses on command-line workflows, though it also includes the lightweight Fluxbox window manager for users needing a basic graphical environment.
Grml 2026.09 adds exFAT support to the initramfs, allowing boot from USB devices formatted with exFAT. GNU Screen is updated to version 5.0.1, with changes to Grml’s configuration. The project notes the updated configuration is not backward compatible, so users running GNU Screen 4.9 must use the older configuration file provided.
The release also updates grml-debootstrap, Grml’s Debian installation tool. Debian Forky can now be selected directly from its dialog frontend. The file /etc/kernel-img.conf is no longer created on target systems, leaving that to Debian’s defaults.
There are also bigger changes in grml-live, the project’s build system for creating Grml-based live systems. It now requires Linux user namespaces in the build environment, prompted by newer systemd behavior.
Support for reading configuration from grml-live.conf has been removed, the command-line syntax changed, and chroot-based workflows are temporarily unsupported. The project says support for these workflows will return later. Remaining 32-bit i386 support has also been dropped from grml-live.
On top of that, Grml 2026.09 adds EFI firmware packages for QEMU, including ovmf on amd64 and qemu-efi-aarch64 on ARM64, useful for testing EFI bootloader setups in virtual machines. Plus, GRUB now sources hook files and respects the ${extraopts} setting.
Finally, the old save-config and restore-config scripts have been removed. grml2usb now provides a hint about required GNU GRUB packages when grub-install fails.
For additional details, see the announcement. Grml 2026.09 continues to provide live images for both 64-bit x86 (amd64) and 64-bit ARM (arm64) systems. Users installing the release to USB media with grml2usb should make sure they are running version 0.20.14 or newer.
