Welcome to Week 40 of Linuxiac’s 2026 Weekly Roundup, your source for Linux and open-source news. Below are the key Linux and FOSS highlights from September 28 to October 4.
Linux Distributions
This week brought seven updates in the Linux world, and I’ve covered each one in the articles below.
- OpenMandriva ROME 26.09 Released With Linux Kernel 7.2, Plasma 6.7
- Ubuntu 26.10 Beta Lands With Linux Kernel 7.3-rc and GNOME 51
- Arch Linux October 2026 ISO Is Out with Linux Kernel 7.2.7, Systemd 262
- antiX 26.1 Released as a Debian 13-Based Systemd-Free Linux
- Nitrux 7.0 Launches With New Workspace Environment, Linux Kernel 7.2
- Security-Focused Parrot OS 7.4 Released With Linux Kernel 7.1, AnonSurf 6.0
- Tails 7.14 Anonymous OS Updates Tor Browser, Tor Client, and Linux Kernel
Software Updates
Below is a summary of this week’s latest open-source software updates.
- Firefox 157 Nova Released With Its Biggest Visual Refresh in Years
- LibreOffice 26.8.1 Lands With 40+ Fixes Across the Office Suite
- Wine 11.19 Adds DNS Caching, Unicode 18 Support, Fixes 23 Bugs
- Archinstall 4.5 Adds Better AArch64 Support, RT Kernels
- KDE Plasma 6.8 Beta 2 Brings More Polish Ahead of October 14 Release
- GNOME 49.10 Released as the Final Update in the GNOME 49 Series
- Mozilla Thunderbird 157 Fixes 100% CPU Usage, OpenPGP, and IMAP Issues
- Shotcut 26.9 Video Editor Adds Audio Ducking, FFmpeg 9.0
- OpenShot 4.0.1 Video Editor Improves Razor Tool, Timeline Editing, and Linux Support
- Flatpak 1.18.4 Released With Fixes for Six Security Vulnerabilities
- OpenSSL 4.0.3 Released With High-Severity Security Fixes
- Audacity 4.0.1 Audio Editor Fixes Project Corruption, Linux AppImage Issues
- Pangolin 1.24 Tunneled Reverse Proxy Adds Exit Nodes, Linux Subnet Routing
- F-Droid 2.0 Android App Store Launches With New UI, Improved Search
- Git 2.56 Released With Safer Conflict Resolution and Performance Gains
- Tcl/Tk 9.1 Released With Screen Reader Support and RTL Text
- Rust 1.99 Released With C Variadic Functions, New Stable APIs
- Zig 0.17 Programming Language Lands With Reworked Build System
- OpenTofu 1.13 IaC Tool Brings Windows ARM64 Support, Smarter Planning
- Gitea 28.0 Drops 1.x Versioning, Adds Audit Logs and Bot Accounts
- Darktable 5.6.2 Open Source RAW Editor Fixes OpenCL and Crashes
- Qt 6.12 LTS Released With QML Hot Reload, GPU-Accelerated CanvasPainter
- GoZen 0.14 Video Editor Enters Beta, Built With Godot and FFmpeg
Must-Reads You Can’t Miss
The Linux and FOSS community also saw several notable developments. Key highlights include:
- Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Users Can Now Upgrade to Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS
- COSMIC Stops Accepting LLM-Generated Content in Pull Requests
- Microsoft Brings Native Linux Container Workflows to WSL
- New Spectre-v2 BTR Attack Can Leak Linux Kernel Memory
- Rust Is Now a Tier-1 Programming Language at Microsoft
- PhotoSuite Is a Free Photoshop-Like Editor With Native PSD Support
- aerynOS Could Soon Welcome Budgie Desktop
- KDE Plasma 6.8 Adds More Polish While Plasma 6.9 Starts Taking Shape
- KDE Plasma 6.8 Gives the Oxygen Theme More Modern Touches
- Mozilla Thunderbird Is Finally Coming to iPhone and iPad
- Nginx UI Turns Nginx Management Into a Modern Web Experience
- Cloudflare Is Building a Free Public CA to Rival Let’s Encrypt
- Kagi Ends Orion Browser Development for Linux, Will Open-Source It
That’s all for this week. If you missed our previous wrap-up from Week 39 of 2026 (September 21 to 27), you can catch up here, where you’ll find SparkyLinux 2026.09, Systemd 262, COSMIC Desktop 1.9, Budgie Desktop 10.10.3, Noctalia 5.2, Flatpak 1.18.3, Kitty 0.49, Rsync 3.5.1, Samba 4.25, What’s Up Docker 9.0, Ubuntu Kernels Move to Weekly Releases, Klassik Revives the KDE 3 Desktop on Modern Plasma 6, and many more.
Keep an eye on Linuxiac for the latest updates from the Linux and open-source world.
Have a great week ahead!
