Rhythm of the Linux Desktop

With the release of Gnome 48, I asked myself the question: When will it be available in which distro? And this led me into a tiny rabbit hole that revealed a certain rhythm in the way desktop distros are released that I wanted to share here.

GNOME has a pretty fixed release schedule, with a new version every March and September¹. The two most used desktop distros (citation needed, but if you include their downstreams, I would say this is true) are Ubuntu and Fedora. Ubuntu has GNOME as its default desktop environment. In Fedora, GNOME has the flagship status (called “workstation”). With the release of Fedora 42, KDE will have the same status. Both distros decided to match their release cycle to GNOME, releasing one month after each GNOME release: every April and every October. How does that influence the other distros? For that, we first need to take a brief look at Debian.

Debian

Debian is well known for its slower release schedule. As far as I know, there is no set release schedule. But since 2007, there has been a major release every two years. Debian 13 “Trixie” will be released later this year with Gnome 48. In the installer, you can also choose a few other desktop environments.

All packages and updates start in the experimental repository. From there, they make their way into Debian Unstable (also known as “Sid”, a character from Toy Story). Debian Sid is a distro you can install on your devices. It is not a rolling release like Arch, as there is no release testing. After a package has been in unstable for at least 2–10 days and fulfills a list of other criteria, it makes its way into Debian Testing. Testing is the next release of Debian (also called “next-stable”) and gets a release number and name (the name is always a character from Toy Story). So the current Debian Testing² is the Debian 13 “Trixie” mentioned above.

Ubuntu

Ubuntu releases follow the schema of year.month — so the one released in April will be 25.04. In addition, each release has a code name that is an alliteration of an adjective and an animal (like “Plucky Puffin”). Ubuntu packages are based on Debian’s unstable branch, which are synchronized every six months. Every fourth release (i.e. the April release of every even-numbered year) is an LTS release that receives updates for a longer time. The last LTS release was 24.04, so the next one will be 26.04.

Ubuntu itself ships with GNOME. Ubuntu offers so-called flavours to offer different desktop environments. Each of them has its own name, like Kubuntu for KDE Plasma or Xubuntu for Xfce. Apart from the flavours, there are also quite a few distros that use Ubuntu as their upstream. The most notable are probably:

• Mint, which is always based on the latest LTS and ships Cinnamon as its default. It is also quite popular among Xfce users as a more stable alternative to Xubuntu.
• Pop! OS releases for both LTS and non-LTS. It ships its own desktop environment COSMIC, which is currently a heavily-modified GNOME. They are working on a complete rewrite in Rust that does not use GNOME.
• elementary OS is based on LTS and ships its own desktop environment Pantheon.
• Zorin is based on LTS and ships with either GNOME or XFCE, but heavily customized to make it more familiar for Windows and macOS users.
• KDE Neon by the KDE project is based on LTS and always ships the latest KDE Plasma versions.

Fedora

Fedora releases just count up a number. The release in April will be 42. The equivalent to Debian Sid is Fedora Rawhide. Fedora does not have LTS releases, but I would argue that CentOS Stream is basically the LTS for Fedora. So far, there has been a new CentOS Stream every three years in December. CentOS Stream 10 was released in December 2024 and is supported for four years.

There are two editions of Workstation starting in 42, one with GNOME and the other with KDE Plasma. The other choices, like Cinnamon, are offered as so-called “spins”. Additionally, there are four Atomic Desktops. They are similar to spins (each features a different Desktop environment). I wrote a post about Silverblue, the atomic GNOME spin, if you want to learn more. Fedora is also the base for other distros:

• Nobara is Fedora with adjustments to improve it for gaming.
• Universal Blue is based on Atomic Desktops. Its “spins” are the KDE-based Aurora, GNOME-based Bluefin and gaming-focused bazzite.
• CentOS Stream is upstream of RHEL, Oracle Linux, AlmaLinux, and RockyLinux.

The Others

• Arch is a rolling release, by the way. It serves as the basis for EndeavourOS, CachyOS, Manjaro, and SteamOS.
• Alpine releases every May and December. It is also the basis for postmarketOS.
• Gentoo is also a rolling release.
• openSUSE comes in a rolling release (Tumbleweed) and stable release (Leap) flavor.
• NixOS releases every May and November.

Desktop Environments

To complete the picture, let’s look at which desktop environments the most common desktop distros offer. In general, you can install any desktop environment on any distro. But, as explained above, Ubuntu offers some as “flavours” and Fedora offers some as “spins” (as well as some as Atomic Desktops, which I marked with ⚛️). In Debian and Mint, you can choose from a list of desktop environments in the installation process:

The Rhythm

Let’s look at the GNOME releases, and when they were available in the distros that release twice a year:

As we can see, Ubuntu and Fedora users get the GNOME release approximately one month after release (with one exception for Fedora). Alpine users get it 2-3 months after release and NixOS two months after release.

Let’s compare that to the arch-etype of a rolling release: According to this blog post, Arch always waits for the .1 release of every GNOME release. It is relased roughly one month after the .0 release. If that’s true, that means that Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch users get the latest GNOME release roughly one month after the relase. NixOS users get it two months after the release, and Alpine users get it two to three months after the release.

Seeing that most of the Ubuntu-based distros are based on LTS, and that there is an LTS release every two years, made me realize that they all have a similar rhythm to Debian³:

• Debian 12 was released in June 2023, featuring GNOME 43. Debian 13 will be released later this year, featuring GNOME 48.
• Ubuntu 22.04 LTS was released in April 2022, featuring GNOME 42. Ubuntu 24.04 LTS was released in April 2024, featuring GNOME 46.
• CentOS Stream 9 was released in December 2021, featuring GNOME 40. CentOS Stream 10 was released in December 2024, featuring GNOME 47.

So both Debian and Ubuntu LTS have released every two years, and CentOS Stream every three years. Both Debian 12 and CentOS Stream 9 did not release with the latest GNOME release, but with the one before that.

Conclusion

If you are using GNOME, you will get the newest version of GNOME roughly one month after the release in Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch. You get it slightly later in NixOS and Alpine. With Debian and Ubuntu LTS, you get a new version every two years, which means roughly every fourth GNOME release. With CentOS Stream, it is every three years, so roughly every sixth release.

Thanks

Thanks to mkhl for their feedback ❤️

Footnotes