The 270th installment of the 9to5Linux Weekly Roundup is here for the week ending on December 14th, 2025, keeping you updated with the most important things happening in the Linux world. If you missed last week’s 9to5Linux Weekly Roundup, catch up with everything GNU/Linux/Open Source here.

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This week, we got new releases of the Firefox web browser, Thunderbird email client, Parrot and Kali Linux ethical hacking distros, KDE Plasma and Cinnamon desktop environments, KDE Gear and KDE Frameworks software suites, Mixxx DJ software, AerynOS, Grml, pearOS, and Tails distros, NVIDIA graphics driver, and Raspberry Pi Imager.

On top of that, I tell you all about System76’s first COSMIC desktop written in Rust on Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS. Below, you can check out this week’s hottest news and access all the distro and package downloads released this past week in the 9to5Linux weekly roundup for December 14th, 2025.

Hot news of the week

• Firefox 146 is out with native support for fractional scaled displays on Wayland
• KDE Plasma 6.5.4 desktop environment arrives with numerous bug fixes
• Firefox 147 promises support for the XDG Base Directory Specification, Beta out now
• Parrot 7.0 Beta ethical hacking distro switches to KDE Plasma as default desktop
• Canonical to package and distribute AMD ROCm within Ubuntu’s repositories
• Thunderbird 146 introduces configuration UI for setting up OpenPGP keyservers
• AerynOS 2025.12 is out with GNOME 49.2, Mesa 25.3, and KDE Plasma 6.5.4
• Cinnamon 6.6 desktop environment arrives with redesigned application menu
• Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0.2 adds support for multiple SSH keys, direct I/O bypass
• Tails 7.3.1 anonymous Linux OS is here with Tor Browser 15.0.3 and Tor 0.4.8.21
• KDE Gear 25.12 software suite arrives with many improvements for KDE apps
• NVIDIA 580.119.02 Linux graphics driver brings various bug fixes
• System76 launches first stable release of COSMIC desktop and Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS
• pearOS is back, now based on Arch Linux and featuring the KDE Plasma desktop
• Kali Linux 2025.4 ethical hacking distro arrives with KDE Plasma 6.5, GNOME 49
• KDE Frameworks 6.21 adds support for Nim code files to the Breeze icon theme
• Grml 2025.12 Linux distro is out based on Debian Forky and Linux kernel 6.17
• Linus Torvalds announces first Linux kernel 6.19 Release Candidate
• Mixxx 2.5.4 open-source DJ app improves support for Korg KAOSS DJ, Pioneer DJ CDJ

Linux distributions released this week

• OpenmediaVault 8.0-12
• SystemRescue 12.03
• Kali Linux 2025.4
• Grml 2025.12
• Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS (Intel/AMD)
• Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS (NVIDIA)
• KDE neon 20251211
• AerynOS 2025.12
• CentOS Stream 10-20251209
• Univention Corporate Server 5.2-4
• Gentoo 20251207
• MakuluLinux 2025-12-05

Linux apps, drivers, desktops, and kernels released this week

• Mixxx 2.5.4
• ImageMagick 7.1.2-11 (GCC)
• ImageMagick 7.1.2-11 (Clang)
• OBS Studio 32.0.4
• snapd 2.73
• Mir 2.25.0
• Linux kernel 6.18.1 LTS
• Linux kernel 6.17.12
• Linux kernel 6.12.62 LTS
• Docker 29.1.3
• NetworkManager 1.54.3
• systemd 258.3
• Ventoy 1.1.09
• Audacity 3.7.7
• NVIDIA 580.119.02
• Rust 1.92.0
• Qt Creator 18.0.1
• Chromium 143.0.7499.109
• Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0.2
• RPM 6.0.1
• Krita 5.2.14
• Mozilla Thunderbird 146.0
• Tor Browser 15.0.3
• CMake 4.2.1
• Mozilla Firefox 146.0
• ALSA 1.2.15

Coming up next week

• SparkyLinux 2025.12
• Shotcut 25.12
• postmarketOS 25.12
• …and hopefully many other exciting Linux news and releases!

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