333: Photoshop on Linux?, CachyOS, MX Linux, ReactOS, PikaOS, NexPhone, & more Linux news

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This week in Linux, something crazy happened. Someone managed to get modern Adobe Photoshop installing on Linux with some nude wine patches. Plus MX Linux 25.1 is out with multi-init support and CachyOS dropped a new ISO with fresh kernels and desktop updates. Also Zorin OS 18 just hit a big milestone with over 2 million downloads. And there’s a new convergence phone project called next phone that claims that it can run Android, Linux, and even windows. All of this and more on This Week in Linux, the weekly new show that keeps you up to date with what’s going on in the Linux and Open Source world. Now let’s jump right into Your Source for Linux GNews.

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(Music Playing)

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This episode of TWIL is sponsored by Sandfly Security, more on them later.

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that sounds fake at first, but it’s real. A community developer has figured out how to get modern versions of Adobe Photoshop to install and run on Linux using Wine, and this includes Photoshop 2021 and Photoshop 2025. Now, people have been able to get Photoshop to run on Linux in the past, but typically this is very old versions because the Creative Cloud installer has been a major roadblock for years, but this week that part has been solved.

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The patches target specific Windows components that Adobe relies on, like MS, HTML, and MS XML, which handle the installer’s HTML, JavaScript, and XML configuration files. Wine historically struggled with those pieces, so the installer would just break. The developer tweaked Wine to better mimic older Internet Explorer behavior and fixed how XML data and IDs are handled, and that was enough to make the Creative Cloud installer complete successfully.

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installed, the developer claims that Photoshop 2021 runs smoothly, though there are still some quirks, and reports on Photoshop 2025 are mixed. This is all unofficial, requires compiling a patched version of Wine from source, and of course there’s no native Linux build from Adobe, so, you know, mileage may vary, but the patches have been submitted upstream to Wine, and they’re not been merged yet, but there’s still some…

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There’s a lot of effort and a lot of interest, so we’ll see what happens there.

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The Creative Cloud installer working at all is a big deal, and it opens the door for other Adobe apps to potentially run on Linux in the future. In fact, there’s also a report by the same developer that he was able to get Adobe Collections to load as well. Now, again, this is for power users and experimenters, so it’s not going to be an average user or a beginner user’s path to get Adobe Photoshop to work on Linux, but this is a very promising development when it comes to one of the biggest creative blocks for people switching to Linux, because let’s face it, a lot of people use Photoshop.

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I used to use Photoshop for years when I did website design, graphic design, and all that sort of stuff. And even when I switched to Linux, I kept a virtual machine of Windows exclusively to run Photoshop. But I’ve been happily, and I mean happily, using something else for years now. And that’s something else, it’s PhotoP. PhotoPA.com. And for me, it’s at least 90% as good. Now it’s not gonna have absolutely everything that Photoshop has because Photoshop continues to develop and PhotoP is a much smaller team. So understandably, it doesn’t have everything, but it is so good for what it is. And the price is completely reasonable. It’s like $50, something like that per year. I don’t remember exactly the details, but it is ridiculously good price. And it also does all the fundamental features that I want from Photoshop, like smart objects, smart filters, masking, all that sort of stuff. Like the layer systems are like not… Of course, layer system, but I mean like layer styles. And there’s a ton of things that PhotoP can do that Photoshop is known for. So it’s a fantastic thing. And anybody who is interested in switching to Linux and is worried about Photoshop being supported, check out PhotoP. I think there’s a huge likelihood that you’ll be able to switch over with PhotoP. And by the way, they also have a vector system called VectorP.

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So for those who are Illustrator users, anyway, so it’s had the fundamental features that I’ve needed from Photoshop. So I haven’t even considered Photoshop for long enough that I don’t remember the last time I used it. However, a lot of people are still stuck in the Adobe Vortex. So this is great news that chips away at one of the biggest blockers, keeping creative professionals off of the Linux desktop. So if you must use Photoshop because the company you work for requires you to, then this would be really good news for you. But if you don’t have that requirement, check out PhotoP. It’s really good.

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very well done to the developer who did this work of Files Basement. I think that’s how it is.

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Really cool work to see because Photoshop is one of the biggest blockers for creative professionals and it’s awesome to see that it’s maybe not going to be a blocker anymore.

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Two months ago in November, MX Linux released version 25. This was a big update to the distro as they upgraded the base from Debian 12 to Debian 13. Now we didn’t cover it on TWIL at the time because well, I was hit by a car, but this limited my video output quite a bit and I’m back now on TWIL making weekly episodes. So let’s cover MX Linux, especially since 25.1 came out this week.

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MX Linux has a new point release with MX Linux 25.1 and it’s a pretty interesting one because it leans into flexibility more than most mainstream distros. Now this release is based on Debian 13.3 Trixie and ships with the Linux 6.18 LTS kernel. Now by default, MX Linux uses sysv and it, but they also have an interesting approach of supporting multiple in it systems out of the box. So you can also use system D. Now this feature was actually removed from the previous release with MX 25 due to technical issues. But and also they announced this back in August of last year because there were some technical issues making it not possible to have them. Both of the, the in it systems running on the same ISO. So they had different ISOs based on the in it system. But with this point release, they brought it back. The project calls this the in it diversity and they’ve improved tooling to make switching and managing these in it systems even smoother. Now that is not going to matter to most users, but while being a niche feature, it matters to some people who want to avoid system D or just want to experiment with various in it systems. So this is a really interesting approach to Linux distro building.

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On the desktop side, MX Linux 25.1 includes updated versions of XFC, EK, E plasma and flux box along with installer improvements. There have also been updated drivers, better hardware support and tweaks for performance and stability that they inherited from Debian 13.

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Now it’s not the flashiest of releases, but reinforces MX’s identity as a stable user friendly distro that also gives power users unusual control over a core system components.

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CachyOS has a new January 2026 ISO release and it continues the project’s focus on performance and modern desktop features on top of Arch Linux. This release brings updates across the board. It has refreshed packages and kernel options and all sorts of stuff and one of the headline changes though is KDE’s new plasma login manager is being used. Not only in the KDE edition but also in the live ISO because the ISO has been switched to plasma login manager as well as being switched away from X11 to Wayland now.

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The distro ships with multiple optimized kernels including variants tuned for different CPUs and continues to use aggressive compiler optimizations and performance patches. Now that’s basically the core identity of CachyOS squeezing extra performance out of Arch without making users configure everything manually.

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KDE edition. So the new plasma login manager replaces the older SDDM setup. Now SDDM is fairly old but also is not that well maintained. It’s not like there’s not a ton of features being built for it and that sort of thing and it’s not really directly built for KDE plasma. It’s just something they were using. So this was actually something we talked about on a previous episode of TWIL where KDE has been working on a new login manager and this is now ready to go so CachyOS is implementing it. Now this aims for tighter integration with plasma 6 and also a smoother login process. There are also updated desktop packages, newer Mesa and graphics stacks and refresh tooling for installation and system management.

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Now if you’re into performance focused Linux setups with minimal manual tuning, this is a really solid snapshot of where CachyOS is heading and CachyOS is definitely a really nice option for those who want to have a rolling release system, who want to have the performance enhancement stuff, not that kind of performance enhancement but improved performance for the kernel and stuff like that.

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Anyway CachyOS is a really good destroyer. If you haven’t checked it out, be sure to do that. You’ll find links in the show notes.

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PikaOS has a new January 2026 update, and this one is a pretty big refresh across the whole stack. The project rebuilt a massive chunk of its packages, updated the kernel, refreshed desktop environments, and pushed new ISO snapshots for users who want a clean install. The latest ISO focuses heavily on package rebuilds and syncing with upstream. The distro ships with Linux 6.18 kernel, updated Mesa, and newer versions of major desktops like GNOME 49, KDE Plasma 6.5, and Budgie 10.10. Kapega OS continues to ship multiple editions, including GNOME, KDE, Hyprland, and Niri, targeting gamers and power users who want modern desktops out of the box.

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If you’re not familiar with PikaOS, well, it’s built on Debian with custom compiled packages, tuned kernels, and a focus on performance and gaming. It’s similar in spirit to things like Nobara and CachyOS and things like that, but with a Debian base and its own tooling layer. This update is mostly about refreshing the base and keeping everything cutting edge, not necessarily introducing a single big flagship feature, but if you count all the different updates from the various different desktops, there’s a lot of new features. And if this sounds good to you, you’ll find links in the show notes for PikaOS 2026 January release. I don’t think they have a version number similar to like other rolling release type distributions. So that’s the latest one. Check out the latest one.

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Zorin OS 18 was released in October of last year. And I talked about that release on 12-328. But I wanted to talk about it again this week because Zorin OS just hit a pretty big milestone. Zorin has announced that they have crossed two million downloads. That’s a strong signal of it continuing to be one of the most popular Linux distros for beginners.

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Zorin OS 18 introduced a revamped desktop, updated Zorin appearance layouts, and a polished onboarding experience aimed at people switching from Windows. The team also put a lot of work into performance, flag pack integration, app compatibility, and a lot more to make it as enticing as possible for people who are switching away from Windows.

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Hitting two million downloads shows that their strategy of targeting newcomers with a polished experience is working. And it’s also a reminder that beginner-friendly distros still play a big role in Linux growth.

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Zorin, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and others are often the first touchpoint for people who are leaving Windows. And with the end of Windows 10, it’s been a strong motivator for people switching to Linux, as well as many other things just in Windows 11 in general, giving tons of reasons for people wanting to switch. And Zorin has been there to be an option for those people, and based on the continued path, Microsoft seems committed to making their users hate being their users. Linux is likely to continue to grow among these people, and Zorin continues to be a solid option for those people wanting to switch to Linux.

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ReactOS just hit a pretty wild milestone. The project is celebrating 30 years of development, which is kind of insane for an open-source operating system that’s basically trying to re-implement Windows from scratch. ReactOS started in the mid-1990s as a free and open-source Windows-compatible OS, inspired by the old, uh, free Win95 project. The goal has always been to recreate the Windows NT architecture so Windows drivers and applications can run natively without needing Microsoft’s code. That’s a massive technical challenge, and it’s why ReactOS has taken decades, and is still considered alpha software for the most part. But to mark this anniversary, the team published a retrospective on the project’s history, challenges, and milestones, and there’s been some recent technical progress, too. For example, work landed on asynchronous networking connection handling, which improves how the system handles network connections and modern application behavior. ReactOS is not likely to be available for day-to-day use anytime soon, or maybe even ever due to the level of complexity it is, but it is a very important project from a research and engineering perspective, so congrats to the team, and here’s to many, many more years.

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There’s a new Linux-friendly smartphone project that’s popping back up, and it’s called the Nexphone. NEXphone. This is… I say that because popping back up is because it’s a revival of an older concept, but now the team is pitching a convergence-focused phone that can boot Android or Linux, and act like a desktop when it is docked. The idea is that you use it as a normal Android phone on the go, then plug it into a dock or an external display, and boot into a full Debian environment with a desktop interface and all that. It’s basically trying to be similar to Canonical’s Ubuntu phone convergence, but using mainstream Android hardware with a Linux option layered on top.

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The Debian portion runs as an app with GPU acceleration on top of Android, and when you connect the phone to a monitor and keyboard and mouse, well, you basically get a full Linux desktop experience with Debian. The company says the goal is to bridge mobile and desktop computing with Linux apps and a full desktop environment. There’s also marketing it towards developers and Linux enthusiasts and people who want more control over their device compared to locked-down Android phones.

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If that wasn’t interesting enough for you, well, this phone can also boot into Windows 11. NEXphone has created its own custom grid-based UI for the Windows side of things, but when you connect it to a monitor, well, you can load a full Windows desktop experience for some reason if you want to.

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This is still very early and mostly in announcement and concept stage, but it’s interesting because Convergence phones keep coming back every few years. Now, whether NEXphone actually ships and delivers on the dual-boot Debian experience is the big question here, but it shows there’s still demand for a phone that can double as a Linux workstation in your pocket, and it’s a really cool concept. When Ubuntu announced it, I thought it was a really cool concept, and personally, I’ve wanted something like this ever since Ubuntu was trying to do this, and I still want it, but I’ve been waiting so long that at this point, I’d just be happy with a reliable smartphone that isn’t tracking everything I do. Wouldn’t that be nice?

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GamingOnLinux.com is reporting that there is a big milestone that was just hit for the Steam Deck, and they say that more than 25,000 games are now rated playable or verified for the Steam Deck, which is massive. Also, the rate of which these games are being verified is increasing more and more. So it took seven months to go from November 2024 to June 2025, and in that period it went from 17,000 to 20,000, so a jump of 3,000 games in those seven months. And now we went six months, and there’s now 5,000 more games. So that means the pace has almost doubled in the last six months. This info comes from Valve’s Deck Verified program, where games get tested and tagged as verified, playable, unsupported, or unknown. And verified means that it should just work out of the box, like right out of the box on the Steam Deck. And playable means, well, it runs, but it might need some tweaks, like manual graphics settings and maybe a keyboard for certain inputs and that sort of thing. And hitting 25,000 compatible titles shows how far Proton and Linux gaming just has come. A few years ago, the idea of tens of thousands of Windows games working on Linux handheld hardware or working on Linux in general would have sounded ridiculous. Like if you go back before Proton, the amount of games we had was significant. We had a good amount of games, but it wasn’t anything like it when Proton came out. Now it’s basically normal for Steam Deck owners to just have tons of games available to them. In fact, when I first got started with Linux, I don’t think there was even 25 games to play. This was a very long time ago, but still, Steam coming to Linux changed everything, and Proton also changed everything. It also shows how serious Valve is about treating the Steam Deck like a mainstream platform. Developers are targeting it, Valve keeps improving Proton, and the compatibility list just keeps growing. At this point, the Steam Deck is one of the strongest proof points that Linux gaming can scale to a mass market audience. And it’s just awesome to hear this. And well done, Valve. Thank you, Valve, for making Linux gaming a thing. So for those who don’t know, before Valve, the 25 games might be a little bit of an exaggeration. I don’t know how many there really were, but it wasn’t a lot. It was less than 100, I would bet. Then Steam is announced for Linux, and a lot of games are compatible. They had to be made native, so you still had the limitations of what games were available, but you had an option, and that was fantastic. And then 2018 comes around, and they announced Proton. Changes everything. Now, there are some pros and cons to Proton. One of the cons is that native gaming on Linux is actually more performant than through Proton, just because of not having to translate the Windows tools and Windows layer stuff. But at the same time, it increased the amount of possibilities that games could work on Linux. So it’s just fantastic. And now having 25,000 games verified for the Steam Deck, which means, practically speaking, that 25,000 games are verified for Linux in general, too. That’s not always the case. Some games are made for Steam Deck that don’t work on Linux, and that it does happen. But the vast majority of them do work on Linux. And I’m pretty sure Valve even has a requirement that you kind of have to do that now. I could be wrong about that one. I remember hearing people talk about that, but I don’t remember if it actually happened. So we’ll just put that on like an asterisk. Someone, let me know in the comments if that did happen, because I don’t remember. I’ve covered a lot of news on this show for many years, and I could just be misremembering. Anyway, let me know in the comments.

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But again, thanks, Valve.

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Just thanks.

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Thanks for watching this episode of This Week in Linux. If you like what I do here on this show and want to be kept up to date with what’s going on in the Linux and Open Source world, then be sure to subscribe. And of course, remember to like that smash button. And if you’d like to support the show and the channel, then consider becoming a patron by going to tuxdigital.com/membership, where you can get a bunch of great perks like access to the patron only section of our Discord server and much, much more. You can also support the show by ordering the Linux support t-shirt or the This Week in Linux shirt, which is the one I’m wearing right now at tuxdigital.com/store. Plus while you’re there, check out all the other cool stuff we have, like hats, mugs and hoodies and so much more at tuxdigital.com/store. I’ll see you next time for another episode of Your Source for Linux GNews. Thanks again for watching. I’m Michael Tunnell. I hope you’re doing swell. Be sure to ring that notification bell. And until next time, I bid you farewell.