Open-source News

After looking yesterday at the most viewed Linux hardware reviews and benchmarks of 2025, today's look is at the most popular open-source/Linux news of the past year. There were 3,286 original news articles on Phoronix during 2025 written by your's truly, here's a look back at what excited readers the most over these past twelve months...

The ReactOS free software project is turning 30 this year and its "open-source Windows" OS ambitions remain. They are starting out this year with another "major step" towards Windows NT 6.0 compatibility...

MocaccinoOS Is a More User-Friendly Version of Gentoo Linux  The New Stack

These are the 5 most beautiful Linux distros  How-To Geek

For fans of the IceWM X11 window manager, the project kicked off 2026 by releasing IceWM 4.0...

WinBoat is an open source tool that lets you seamlessly run Windows applications on Linux.  GIGAZINE

I'm brave enough to say it: Linux is good now, and if you want to feel like you actually own your PC, make 2026 the year of Linux on (your) desktop  PC Gamer

Arch Linux Kicks Off 2026 with New ISO Powered by Linux Kernel 6.18 LTS  9to5Linux

Kicking off the new year for Linux gaming and cross-platform gaming at large is the release of the SDL 3.4 library. SDL is part of the Steam runtime and continues to be widely-used for abstracting software/hardware for creating more portable games and other applications...

SDL 3.4 Released With Many New APIs, Better Emscripten & Native PNG Support  Phoronix

Merged to Linux Git on New Year's Eve was a fix in the form of a code revert for broken MediaTek WiFi on the in-development Linux 6.19 kernel...

Linux 6.19 Lands Fix For Dead WiFi With MediaTek MT792x Wireless  Phoronix

With Linux 6.19 aging AMD GCN 1.0 and GCN 1.1 GPUs switched the default kernel driver used to provide for much better performance, RADV Vulkan support out-of-the-box, and other improvements compared to using the legacy Radeon DRM kernel driver. For 2026, Timur Kristóf of Valve's Linux graphics team has more improvements still planned to enhance these older AMD graphics cards on Linux...

More Improvements To Old AMD GPU Support On Linux Are Planned For 2026  Phoronix

This new Linux desktop runs like an app on your existing desktop - and I highly recommend it  ZDNET

Locked out of Linux? Here are 2 safe ways to reset your password (no reinstall)  How-To Geek

Two years after launch Intel Meteor Lake offers 93% of original performance on Linux, tests show  VideoCardz.com

Zorin OS says Windows users drove nearly 1M downloads, so I installed it to see why  How-To Geek

FOSS Weekly #26.01: Distros of 2026, Terminal Customization, CachyOS Server Edition and More Linux Stuff  It's FOSS

Linux App Release Roundup (December 2025)  OMG! Ubuntu