What innovative Linux projects are you most excited about right now?
Posted by 6deki9@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 102 comments
As the Linux ecosystem continues to evolve, there are always exciting projects and developments on the horizon. From new desktop environments to groundbreaking distributions and tools, the creativity within the community is truly inspiring. I'm curious to know which innovative Linux projects you're currently following or contributing to. Are there any new applications, frameworks, or distros that have caught your attention lately? Perhaps there’s a unique approach to system management or a fresh take on user experience that you find particularly compelling. Let’s share our thoughts and insights on the projects that are pushing the boundaries of what Linux can achieve.
Outrageous_Trade_303@reddit
linux on mobile! Both KDE and Gnome are moving to that direction, but I guess there's so much staff to be done, both in software and in hardware.
GameKing505@reddit
It would be cool to have a Linux phone but whenever I’ve looked into it the hardware options have come with serious compromises…
Outrageous_Trade_303@reddit
I have a pinephone for developing (I'm a KDE developer) but honestly it's years away before it becomes usable as a daily driver.
It reminds me the linux for desktop back in 2000 when I completely ditched windows switched to linux. Unfortunately it's not that easy to do with smartphones. :(
Pedka2@reddit
how many? like 20?
daemonpenguin@reddit
More like never. Linux on mobile used to be pretty solid and almost on par with Android or iPhone. The gap is getting bigger, faster. Very few people are working on mobile Linux and their resources are limited.
Zaev@reddit
And even MeeGo, with the backing of Nokia and Intel, never caught on despite being what, by most accounts, was a pretty solid OS
Outrageous_Trade_303@reddit
No idea!
Assuming that linux on desktop took about 15 years, then something like that I guess?
15 years is just my personal saying, because I know that you could get linux workstations back in 2000 and some Asus eee PC with Xandros distro preinstalled in mid 2000. But it seems to me that the real boom was in mid 2010 but I may be wrong here or just missing some information.
Wide-Implement-6838@reddit
That's why Linux on phone is so important, the ecosystems for mobile are completely controlled by big corpos and theres very little freedom like there is for PC through linux which locks people in even more
Outrageous_Trade_303@reddit
To add to that: I believe that if there was a working linux alternative for mobiles, developers would embrace it just because of the constant requirement changes in playstore which is frustrated to many devs. I'm speaking based on my experience in android but I believe same applies to ios. I have developed a couple of android tools for my own use initially, and at some I decided to share these with other people in google playstore. One of these end up have more than 10K installs but unfortunately Oi had to remove these because I couldn't keep up with the requirement changes, and judging from what I read in other subs here, it seems that I'm not the only one and it's like google really hates indie devs.
SpecialistPlan9641@reddit
So far Volla Phones are the best options I think -- especially the Quintus
Zeratas@reddit
I think that's what everyone just has to accept. We will no doubt have a Linux phone but there's no chance it's going to be anywhere near the level of support and performance as the major players.
Ok_Meaning8266@reddit
The issue is hardware owners don't usually release their drivers, so anyone who wants to use them has to reverse engineer it, which is very hard and impossible in many cases.
Outrageous_Trade_303@reddit
No that's not true for android. They have to release these because of the linux kernel.
Here is for example samsung's modified kernels
https://opensource.samsung.com/uploadList?menuItem=mobile
The problem is that most vendors are using old kernels (4.x for example) so you need a rather large team of kernel devs to port these to linux kernels. I have tried once but I failed miserably (I'mm not a kernel dev in any case). If you solve this issue then you just use some firmware blobs like in the case of wifi.
daemonpenguin@reddit
You don't need to release driver source code because they are not part of the kernel, they are add on modules. Android drivers tend to be closed source which is why porting is so hard.
Outrageous_Trade_303@reddit
Just download any file from samsung's site above and see for yourself.
Kevin_Kofler@reddit
The kernel drivers may be FOSS (there are also kernel driver blobs getting used by some manufacturers, e.g., the ARM GPU driver blob), but most Android kernel drivers are designed in such a way that they do not work at all without the userspace HAL that is a proprietary blob.
Outrageous_Trade_303@reddit
There's the Halium project for that
https://halium.org/
Kevin_Kofler@reddit
The Halium project allows you to run the blobs as is, but it does not fix the problem that those are blobs. Also, some software such as ModemManager and Plasma Mobile does not support Halium.
Outrageous_Trade_303@reddit
Read again my first comment and pay special attention to this part: "there's so much staff to be done, both in software and in hardware". In any case the source code for the drivers are open source. Your comment is literally out of context and you disregard the rest of the comments.
Kevin_Kofler@reddit
I do not see how my comment is off topic.
Yes, Halium can get you something up and running quickly. That is what several projects, such as Droidian, Ubuntu Touch, SailfishOS, and AsteroidOS are doing. And even some hardware manufacturers such as FuriLabs. But it is not without drawbacks, and no long-term replacement for proper FOSS drivers implementing standard GNU/Linux interfaces, not proprietary kernel interfaces wrapped by a userspace HAL blob implementing Android HAL interfaces. Also because the Android kernel drivers typically lock you into old kernel versions, and because proprietary blobs typically stop getting security updates after a relatively short period of time.
Outrageous_Trade_303@reddit
What's your point exactly? To repeat what I already mentioned in my first comment?
Don't answer to that. I'm not continuing this discussion in any case,
Kevin_Kofler@reddit
What's the point of asking questions you do not want an answer to?
ea_nasir_official_@reddit
Nova/NVK are exciting to me. An open source NVIDIA driver that makes progress faster than Nouveau.
Scoutron@reddit
This cool bash script I made that prints “welcome” whenever I log in. Pretty exciting stuff but I’m not quite ready to release it to the general public
Kripthmaul@reddit
The world is not yet ready for such power.
anotheruser323@reddit
Check out
fortune. It spits out a quote or saying or whatever.fortune -oincludes the less safe for work ones, like "Cocaine is nature's way of telling you you have too much money.". Also cowsay so you canfortune -o | cowsay.oxez@reddit
I'm awaiting the v2.0 release where "written in Rust" appears 5 times
Scoutron@reddit
My memory safe, lightning quick app written in RUST
yabadabaddon@reddit
You misspelled BLAZING FAST
kennyquast@reddit
Version 2.0 could say “welcome u/scouteon, you’re so good at turning me on”
Csigusz_Foxoup@reddit
"...you little naughty boy 😏... My processors are overheating for you, sweetie. Now get back to work 😉😉"
Program finished with exit code 0 |
neo-raver@reddit
We will watch your career with great interest.
Top_Pie3367@reddit
Linux phone and proton, mostly
HonestlyFuckJared@reddit
Yes I too harbour a great excitement within me when discussing the future of mobile devices.
Busy_Agency5420@reddit
who writes like this? xD
RepentantSororitas@reddit
I think they were being a little tongue in cheek
HappyAngrySquid@reddit
When I ponder mobile devices, I feel a warm sensation, methinks it doth be excitement, but it may simply be that I’ve pissed my pants again.
The_Brovo@reddit
I want a decent open source phone so bad
lino_ox@reddit
ai post?
Untagged3219@reddit
Valve Proton and Talos Linux
koverto@reddit
I’m still waiting on an aesthetically pleasing, modern, minimal, performant desktop UI.
It could be just me, but personally I think they all suck ass, Gnome, KDE, Mate, Cinnamon, etc.
I miss the days Fedora Core 1, 2, 3, and 4.
maxwheelf@reddit
Winboat. It doesn't work especially well right now (at least in my experience) but if it can get the kinks ironed it'll remove the biggest boundary to entry of Linux. Between that and proton/wine that'll bring over most applications people would want. The main issues I think it has are that it isn't the most user friendly to set up (though for a relatively early revision I'd put it at like and intermediate difficulty), a more functional USB passthrough(controllers are hit or miss, usually miss, and digital drawing tablets don't work the way they're supposed to), and more consistent functionality and smoothness (sometimes things won't launch or will take an amount of time that it feels like it didn't work and since it sometimes doesn't, that can be pretty annoying) its still in beta and I find it very promising
ResearchingStories@reddit
FreeCAD! I just want good CAD on Linux so engineers can finally escape Windows.
BonillaAintBored@reddit
Nobody is mentioning Winboat?
Dev-in-the-Bm@reddit
Not as long as it doesn't have GPU passthrough.
ClubPuzzleheaded8514@reddit
Using systemd to mount partitions at boot (instead of using fstab) in popular distros, as ClearLinux used to do.
andrzej-l@reddit
Running multiple kernels at once seems something that might bring interesting benefits: https://www.howtouselinux.com/post/linux-might-soon-run-multiple-kernels-at-once
whyexist12345@reddit
I am working on a universal toolkit that handles post install setup for a good array of distributions from Arch based to debian based to Fedora/RHEL based. It sets up several apps that are important to me but also will allow you to basically install whatever you want through a fuzzy search. It also includes samba setup across the distributions and networking tools to test networking setups. I am also trying to put together a system snapshot tool and ISO creator all within this toolkit.Similar to what MX-Snapshitndoes but for all distributions. I am working on a yad interface so it eventually would be GUI based. Right now it is about half and half had along with CLI but it is functional. Right now I am working on cleaning up code testing on different distributions. It has been a fun project.
Danrobi1@reddit
The Kubo team (the primary IPFS implementation) has just released today Kubo v0.39, which now enables Provide Sweep as the default provider system. Source: ipshipyard.com – 2025 DHT Provide Sweep Summary of changes Kubo v0.39 promotes Provide Sweep from an experimental opt-in feature (introduced in v0.38) to the default behavior. After extensive testing showed no significant issues, it now includes intelligent resume functionality and further memory optimizations. By grouping related CIDs assigned to the same DHT servers and systematically sweeping keyspace regions, nodes reduce DHT lookups by approximately 97%, resulting in far more predictable and efficient resource consumption. Why this is significant This update makes self-hosted IPFS content provisioning practical and sustainable for a much wider audience — including individual users, businesses, and organizations. Even resource-constrained devices (e.g., Raspberry Pi) can now reliably announce hundreds of thousands of CIDs, while high-capacity nodes can comfortably scale to hundreds of millions or more. For context, I am currently running Kubo on an old 2011 Lenovo laptop. With the new Provide Sweep system, the node exhibits remarkably low CPU and memory usage, making sustainable IPFS self-hosting feasible on very modest hardware. The improvement is genuinely impressive.
TheSodesa@reddit
The atomic spins of Fedora and their Universal Blue derivatives. Nothing beats a stable and secure system.
alerikaisattera@reddit
Arcan
NurEineSockenpuppe@reddit
Maybe hopefully cinnamon getting usable on wayland soon. Idk if that counts as innovative but I really really like cinnamon. It feels like home but being stuck on x11 does not work for my current setup.
I‘m also excited about the work of valve and their partners on proton. This really is a big opportunity to grow the community. I‘m skeptical of some private for profit entity being the driving force behind progress because at any moment they might change their mind at go in a totally different direction. But at the moment i feel like they are having a very positive impact.
daemonpenguin@reddit
Cinnamon has been working great on Wayland for a couple of years. It is not at all stuck on X11. I would say their Wayland support is better than Plasma or GNOME at this point.
NurEineSockenpuppe@reddit
Oh it does not work well for me at all. Apart from a lot of crashes, no wallpapers i also cannot change my keyboard layout which in itself is a dealbreaker already.
Arctic_Turtle@reddit
Kanidm is 5 years old so maybe not new. But excited to see LDAP alternatives that aren’t totally encumbering to use.
Alpine Linux is also not new but brings a lot of innovation with security features and server setup and very promising once musl is more completely supported.
Void Linux is also interesting with their own solutions to make a rolling release stable. A bit too difficult to set up a desktop environment right now.
Own-Tip6628@reddit
Affinity on Linux
Ferman@reddit
Will be an insane game changer. If black magic can make resolve easier to install Linux will be an easily viable option for media.
LowOwl4312@reddit
is it happening?
pomcomic@reddit
You can run it through Wine/Lutris pretty well and apparently there are internal talks about a native port: https://techcentral.co.za/affinity-for-linux-canvas-next-big-move-could-reshape-the-desktop-software-market/274861/
Big-Society-4426@reddit
Proton, I think Linux gaming is the future and game developer companys will adapt to it considering the current state of windows and microsoft.
wiebel@reddit
The Valve Frame will hit so massively hard. Not at all for the VR aspect but the promise to streamline and improve arm64 support of linux (esp. regarding power efficiency). And if their FEX translation layer for x86 code on arm delivers, this will be a mighty game changer.
RecklessRoller@reddit
Steam Frame
Freibeuter86@reddit
5 minutes ago I read about Canva might port Affinoty to Linux, so.. 💯 this.
Time_Faithlessness45@reddit
Cosmic DE
aieidotch@reddit
https://github.com/alexmyczko/ruptime
ahloiscreamo@reddit
Chawan terminal web browser, so underrated, probably the best terminal web browser to date, no contest.
Props to the maintainer, it rendered most of the website I frequent very well, the css and JavaScript implementation is so good.
AdhesivenessOk228@reddit
misfortune -a | cowsay -t -f bong
aieidotch@reddit
| lolcat
marratj@reddit
I’m currently deep diving into Bootc at work for building our virtual appliance images and managing their updates. Having both our application and system images built and shipped with the same mechanism is a really cool way to tackle stuff.
daYnyXX@reddit
We've been doing this at my job as well and it's been fun. Building our own bootc images to build and deploy updates is great and you can do security scanning against the image which is very convenient.
lethalman@reddit
Do you know where is a getting started guide? All I see is scattered docs without an end-to-end example
marratj@reddit
No real simple tutorial to follow yet, sadly. I also dug my way through the rabbit hole to make sense of it, this is definitely a weak spot.
perkited@reddit
I agree, immutable/atomic distros using bootc. I can understand why some wouldn't want to use them at the moment (they feel they're too limiting), but the ecosystem and tooling around them should continue to improve and make them more flexible/easier to use.
Zeratas@reddit
RHEL 10 who's going to be very interesting with this. I'm in the same boat, while I'm not a sis admin, I have a bunch of different configs and app delivery methods that are going to be a lot smoother now
SNThrailkill@reddit
Bootc is my vote as well! So much container native tooling that instantly applies to our VMs as well
sadece_hickimse@reddit
I’ve spent the last couple of years hunting for that Linux distro — the one that finally stops my endless distro hopping. I tried everything from mainstream giants to niche experiments. Chimera Linux impressed me, but AerynOS is the one that made me say, “Okay… this feels complete.”
It’s modern, thoughtfully built, up-to-date, and honestly smoother than I expected. I’m running Kernel 6.17.9-117, Mesa 25.3.0, KDE Plasma 6.5.3, and it’s been a seriously solid experience. After testing more distros than I’d ever admit publicly, AerynOS ended up being the one that actually feels… right.
https://aerynos.com/
https://www.reddit.com/r/AerynOS/
Kevin_Kofler@reddit
https://asteroidos.org/ is pretty cool. Even more exotic than GNU/Linux on phones, this is GNU/Linux on watches! (Reminds me that I need to get that LG G Watch R's battery replaced so I can use it again, I have not worn that watch for a couple weeks now because of the dead battery.)
Middlewarian@reddit
bcachefs.org
I didn't see any mention of io-uring. My proprietary but free, C++ code generator is based on io-uring. It's implemented as a 3-tier system. The back and middle tiers only run on Linux.
FattyDrake@reddit
Graphite node-based image editor.
This approach has been in other software for a long time but it's really cool to see it in an open source image app.
nehtg0ste@reddit
Another is Pixieditor.
BeauGhis@reddit
I think it would be "Innovative" for all of the Linux distro Developers to take a step back and fix their File Managers for cross-platform network data compatibility instead of focusing on DE sx&glitter. It's gotten slightly better recently but I have yet to come across a distro which has a file manager that will accurately detect a Windows Network AND present its shares AND mount them with authentication.
I did test many of the common distros for just those features recently as I was rolling out a utility program I wrote for my own use and then decided to put it up on GitHub. Go to GitHub/search and look for ScanSMB. This was just old retired me by myself with AI help coding doing something that CAN be done in Linux but has not been, I don't know why.
whosdr@reddit
Advancing the use of desktop portals instead of native toolkit dialogues for file pickers would be really nice.
Alexis_Almendair@reddit
I heard of a app that will add Full NTFS support to linux
whosdr@reddit
There's a kernel driver being worked on, NTFS Plus, if that's what you mean?
lKrauzer@reddit
The FEX compatibility layer so we can play Steam games on ARM such as A droid or a new Steam Deck.
CrociDB@reddit
PostmarketOS: https://postmarketos.org/
I'm really excited to see this get more traction so they can support more phones. Being able to reuse old smartphones effectively as low-powered small computers with several sensors and cameras is a dream come true.
zardvark@reddit
Flake-parts for NixOS.
lillecarl2@reddit
All hail the module system
Ok_Second2334@reddit
ParticleOS/mkosi
ConflictOfEvidence@reddit
Playnite coming to Linux
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/11/playnite-may-get-a-linux-version-during-2026-as-the-creator-plans-a-move-to-linux/
Silvestron@reddit
fish shell, it has some missing features compared to bash.
Business_Reindeer910@reddit
at least unlike many other choices, shell choice isn't binary. so you can still just easily drop into bash with no problem.
RoyAwesome@reddit
Wide support for the new OpenGL "Mesh Shaders" extension. Mesa's zink driver (OpenGL on Vulkan) implemented it earlier this year, and Mesa's amdsi driver has the implementation queued up for release early next year. All we need is Nvidia to implement it (or for nvidia's open source driver to participate in mesa, which can implement it) and you'll have more wide adoption than windows!
DFS_0019287@reddit
I'm on Debian Stable. Take your "innovative" and get off my lawn!
/s
Joking. But really, there's some truth to it. I like the fact that my desktop environment (XFCE) works pretty much the same as it did 20 years ago, with many small quality-of-life improvements but no major changes.
I think the biggest innovation is going to be mostly invisible to end-users and that's the increasing use of Rust in the kernel and in applications. I have no opinion on Rust per se, but I think a stricter more memory-safe language can only be a good thing.
RhubarbSpecialist458@reddit
The direction of flatpak and generally compartmentalizing things, which allows for e.g. selinux to simplify labelling.
tl:dr better security things
daemonpenguin@reddit
Chimera Linux - not for its innovation exactly, but its weird assembly of parts. I think it'll help with compatibility if more distributions adopt unusual combinations of components.
perogychef@reddit
Innovative? Dunno, seems like nothing has happened recently.
But I am messing around with Hyprland and Quickshell.
CheapThaRipper@reddit
Dank Linux?
sammy0panda@reddit
Kazeta i think is a good idea, to restore games as physical media in the face of digital copies being used against us.
Basically it's just a linux distro setup console-like where sd cards are used as your game cartridges
vancha113@reddit
The cosmic desktop. Not innovative in the sense that it solves new problems, but it solves old problems in a more robust way. It's standardizing desktop app development by adhering to certain patterns (elm architecture) and languages (rust) to help make the stack consistent. It comes with its own "sdk" to make this happen like the bigger players in the same ecosystem (gnome and KDE), and it's getting close to an official release. I think that's a quick description that reflects my level of excitement for it right now.
Creepy-Selection-359@reddit
Wine, Lotrus and ect. These people are making compatibility on linux so much better. This is the biggest thing right now. Something else is also beginner friendly distros.
chikamakaleyley@reddit
Just whatever PewDiePie is excited about