Netrunner 26 “Twilight” released with Debian 13, Plasma 6, and Linux 6.16

More than a year after its 25 “Shockworm” release, Netrunner— a Debian-based desktop Linux distribution focused on KDE Plasma—has introduced version 26 “Twilight,” now built on Debian 13 “Trixie”.

While Debian 13 defaults to Linux kernel 6.12, Netrunner 26 steps ahead with Linux 6.16. It also brings a modern KDE stack, including Plasma 6.3.6, KDE Frameworks 6.13, Qt 6.8.2, and KDE Applications 25.04.3.

One of the standout changes is at the platform level: Plasma X11 sessions now run on the XLibre X server instead of the traditional Xorg, marking a notable shift in display handling.

For multimedia and system performance, the distro adopts PipeWire and WirePlumber as the default audio stack, along with power-profiles-daemon for dynamic performance tuning. Hardware support has also been improved, particularly for newer AMD and Intel GPUs, as well as audio and wireless devices.

Netrunner has refreshed several of its own tools and visuals. Samba-mounter has been rewritten using Qt 6 and PolicyKit, while the overall look and feel gets an update with a new SDDM theme and redesigned Plasma 6 themes. The About-extended KCM module has also been updated for full compatibility with Qt 6 and KDE Frameworks 6.

The distro comes preloaded with a solid set of applications, including Firefox 140.7 ESR, Thunderbird 140.6 ESR, LibreOffice 25.2.3, VLC 3.0.23, VirtualBox 7.2.6, Inkscape 1.4, GIMP 3.0.4, and Kdenlive 24.12.3. It also introduces Stacher7, a graphical frontend for yt-dlp.

As expected, it inherits several core improvements from Debian 13. These include enhanced security protections against ROP and COP/JOP attacks on amd64 and arm64 systems, spell-checking support in Qt WebEngine browsers, and the transition of APT from the legacy .list format to the newer .sources (deb822) format, with the apt modernize-sources tool simplifying migration.

Another system-level change is that /tmp now runs in tmpfs (RAM), meaning temporary files are cleaned more frequently. Users might also notice dpkg warnings related to the removal of old directories during upgrades.

Finally, while Netrunner continues to offer a polished KDE experience, it includes some customizations that may not appeal to everyone—particularly if you prefer a more “vanilla” Plasma setup. The inclusion of a custom cursor theme, for instance, might feel out of place for some users.

Netrunner 26 “Twilight” ISO images are available now from the project’s download page. For more details, see the announcement.