Last week the Linux Mint project shared the troubling news how many of its users are behind on important security updates or in some cases even running end-of-life versions. In trying to help address the issue, Linux Mint is working on improvements to its Update Manager to encourage users to apply updates.

Void Linux, a rolling-release distribution we have covered before that is known for its XBPS package manager and interesting design decisions like using the Runit init system and supporting the Musl C library, has recently been working on enhancing its POWER CPU architecture support.

Mageia 8 is out today as a significant and long overdue update to this Linux distribution long ago derived from Mandriva/Mandrake lineage.

Genode OS 21.02 is out as the latest feature release to this open-source operating system framework.

It's been nearly one year to the day since the release of Netrunner 20.01 as this desktop Linux distribution focused on providing a good KDE-based desktop environment and backed by Blue Systems. Today Netrunner 21.01 has been released as the latest step forward for this KDE desktop distribution built atop a Debian base.

The issue of having a beginner/easy-to-use focused desktop Linux distribution but not installing new security updates by default without user intervention is that for many users they fall behind in applying often important security fixes.

While Slackware carries the badge of being the oldest still maintained Linux distribution, it doesn't see new releases too often and doesn't carry the popularity it once did. In any case, Slackware 15.0 is being prepared as the next release.

One year after OpenMandriva Lx 4.1 released, OpenMandriva Lx 4.2 is now available. Continuing to make OpenMandriva Lx rather unique among Linux distributions is its use of the LLVM Clang compiler by default rather than GCC. Another unique "selling point" of OpenMandriva is its AMD Zen optimized version where the entire package set is rebuilt with Zen optimizations.

Linspire 10 is out this week as the newest version of this Linux distribution formerly known as Lindows nearly two decades ago. While Linspire went dark for several years, under its current ownership by PC/OpenSystems they have been trying to reinvigorate the desktop distribution the past few years. Linspire 10 represents the latest work for the Ubuntu-based platform.

Jolla's Sailfish OS 4.0.1 was released this past week to early access subscribers as a major milestone for Sailfish OS 4.

The BeOS-inspired Haiku open-source operating system has continued pushing forward in 2021. The range of their work so far is quite diverse from finally landing SD/MMC driver support to at the same time being a bit more forward-looking and already working on 5-level paging support to handle terabytes of system RAM.

In addition to OpenMandriva Lx 4.2 nearing release, Mageia that shares a similar Mandrake/Mandriva lineage is nearing its next major release in the form of Mageia 8.

The seL4 micro-kernel that has been in development for over a decade saw the creation of the seL4 Foundation last year to further the project's goals. In 2020 the seL4 micro-kernel also added RISC-V as one of its primary CPU architectures.

For those that have been meaning to try out an Arch Linux based distribution that is easy-to-use and not time consuming with sensible defaults, EndeavourOS is out with its first new spin since 2021 -- and in fact their first fresh ISO release since September.

For fans of the Solus Linux distribution, Solus 4.2 is now available as the project's latest release for this optimized, desktop-minded platform.

The pandemic didn't adversely impact the Gentoo Linux project's operations with seeing the overall number of commits grow by nearly 42% last year within the Gentoo repository. Gentoo also saw commits from 333 unique authors in 2020, up from 333 the year prior. Plus they've made other improvements too for this technical-minded Linux distribution too during 2020.

For those wanting to run a micro-kernel operating system for your low-cost, open-source friendly PinePhone, the Genode OS framework plans to port to the PinePhone this year. Genode OS and its Sculpt general purpose platform are also wanting to better embrace GPU support in 2021.

Alpine Linux, the distribution popular for container environments due to its lightweight nature with employing Musl libc and Busybox while being designed for simplicity, security, and efficiency, is out with version 3.13. With Alpine Linux 3.13 the distribution is ramping up its cloud ambitions.

Following the surprise announcement last month that CentOS 8 will be discontinued at EOY2021 with CentOS Stream to be the new upstream for RHEL, several different organizations and developers have announced their intentions to create new community-oriented, open-source rebuilds of Red Hat Enterprise Linux that will be free. One of the promising announcements so far has been from CloudLinux and today they have announced it as AlmaLinux.

Linux Mint 20.1 is out today as the latest version of this user-friendly, desktop-focused Linux distribution built off Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

ReactOS as the long work-in-progress open-source operating system implementation of Windows enjoyed much progress over the course of 2020.

OpenMandriva Lx 4.1 was released last February while now we are closing in on the release of OpenMandriva Lx 4.2 for that Mandriva/Mandrake-derived Linux distribution.

Redox OS, the micro-kernel based Rust-written operating system, is out with a new Christmas release.

Haiku as the open-source OS inspired by BeOS continues to be quite active in feature development as 2020 draws to a close.

Linspire, an early Linux distribution with its roots tracing back to "Lindows" that went dormant and then resurrected in 2018 and continuing an Ubuntu-based distribution, is out ahead of the holidays with its Linspire 10 beta release.

Mageia 8 Beta 1 came all the way back in August while ahead of Christmas that has now been succeeded by a second beta release for this Mandriva/Mandrake-derived Linux distribution.

Just in time for any holiday Raspberry Pi purchases, an updated Raspberry Pi OS is available today for the Debian-based Linux distribution optimized for these budget ARM SBCs.

Pacman, the excellent package manager on Arch Linux, is working on becoming even more compelling with the in-development Pacman 6.0.

Manjaro 20.2 is now available as the latest stable version of this Arch Linux derived distribution focused on providing a pleasant and easy-to-use desktop experience.

Genode as an original operating system framework that has been in development for more than a decade is out with a new release. The Genode OS based Sculpt OS as their "general purpose OS" push is also updated.