Back in February 2026, the Linux Mint devs revealed that they are considering a longer development cycle for future Linux Mint versions, but now the decision is final. With this, they aim to focus more on fixing bugs and improving the Linux Mint desktop.
Mir 2.26 is a hefty update that brings many Wayland improvements, including an initial implementation of the Wayland frontend in the Rust programming language and partial implementation of ext_image_copy_capture_v1 cursor sessions.
KDE Gear 26.04 is here to improve the KDE Itinerary travel assistant app with many features, such as a MapLibre-based backend for the Maps views to render vector-based tiles, which means they can be displayed at any size without visible pixels.
The highlights of Archinstall 4.2 include granular KDE Plasma configuration, nvidia-open now being used for mainline kernels instead of nvidia-open-dkms, a new Pacman settings submenu with Color and Parallel Downloads, and preventing the installation of Xorg packages for Wayland profiles.
Zorin OS 18.1 comes six months after Zorin OS 18 with an up-to-date base from the Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS (Noble Numbat) operating system, featuring the Linux 6.17 HWE (Hardware Enablement) kernel and Mesa 25.2 graphics stack, as well as the latest LibreOffice 26.2 office suite.
GNOME 50.1 adds basic zoom support to the captive portal in GNOME Shell, enables the network agent on the lock screen, updates the on-screen keyboard to better fit on very small screens, and adds support to GNOME Shell for using a triangular noise shape for dithering the lightbox vignette.
COSMIC 1.0.10 is a small release that updates the COSMIC Files file manager with support for user-defined context menu actions, a workaround for delays in the availability of clipboard data, and the ability to cycle through items starting with the same letter in type-to-select mode.
These releases are here to fix CVE-2026-33999, an XKB integer underflow in the XkbSetCompatMap() function that can lead to buffer read overrun when processing a future request if a “compat” buffer was previously truncated, leaving unused space in the buffer. The code in XkbSetCompatMap() will use that space, but fails to update the number of valid entries actually in the buffer.
Highlights of OpenSSL 4.0 include support for Encrypted Client Hello (ECH, RFC 9849), support for SNMP KDF and SRTP KDF, support for signature algorithm sm2sig_sm3, support for RFC 8998, support for [tls-hybrid-sm2-mlkem] post-quantum group curveSM2MLKEM768, and key exchange group curveSM2 support.
Still powered by the long-term supported Linux 6.12 LTS kernel series, which will receive support until December 2028, the new Raspberry Pi OS release (2026-04-13) disables passwordless sudo by default for an extra layer of protection and security.
