[App Sharing] GXDE 25.5 beta1 has arrived — now with full Wayland support!

Apps Section 611 views · 4 replies ·

gfdgd_xi

deepin

Ecological co-builder

2026-08-27 10:37

Author

Below is the full English translation of the GXDE 25.5 beta1 release announcement, preserving all Markdown formatting, links, and images.

After continuous polishing over this period, GXDE 25.5 beta1 is officially released

GXDE OS is a Debian‑based Linux distribution that supports amd64, arm64, loong64, and riscv64 architectures. Featuring the Deepin Desktop Environment from the Deepin 15 era, it continuously refines the desktop experience, striving to provide an elegant, stable, and lightweight out‑of‑the‑box experience—reducing the pain for beginners and saving time for veterans.

The GXDE desktop environment is built upon the Deepin Desktop Environment (DDE), and its components are open‑sourced under the original upstream licenses (GPLv2/LGPL).

Note: 25.5 beta enables the internal testing repository by default. After the 25.5 stable release, please opt out of the internal testing repository via the Control Center for a better experience.
Note: 25.5 beta is still a test version. If you need a more stable experience, we recommend sticking with 25.4.1. Users who have not joined the internal testing repository will not be automatically upgraded to 25.5 beta.

💡 Note: The GXDE 15 series is no longer maintained. Please upgrade to GXDE 25 as soon as possible.

Official website: https://www.gxde.top/

Open‑source repositories:
https://gitee.com/GXDE-OS/
https://github.com/GXDE-OS/

QQ group: 881201853

DistroWatch: https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=gxde

Download Links

(Some mirrors may not have synced yet.)

⚠️ Note: The Hisilicon and Pangu images are special and are only recommended for users with tinkering experience. Beginners should not install them. Furthermore, users with Hisilicon or Pangu chips must install GXDE on an external hard drive and must not modify or adjust any partitions on the machine's internal hard drive; otherwise, the computer may fail to boot and you may be unable to reinstall the system.

Note: Users with Phytium or Kunpeng chips should download the image inside the arm64 folder; Pangu M900 users should download the image inside the arm64-pangu-m900 folder; Hisilicon 9000c users should download the image inside the arm64-hisi9000c folder. Other Hisilicon chips are not currently supported.

CERNET combined mirror (automatically selects the nearest CERNET mirror): https://mirrors.cernet.edu.cn/GXDE/ISO/
Harbin Institute of Technology open‑source mirror: https://mirrors.hit.edu.cn/GXDE/ISO/
Shandong University mirror: https://mirrors.sdu.edu.cn/GXDE/ISO/
Nanyang Institute of Technology open‑source mirror: https://mirror.nyist.edu.cn/GXDE/ISO/
Henan Provincial Education and Research Network open‑source mirror: https://mirrors.ha.edu.cn/GXDE/ISO/
Sourceforge: https://sourceforge.net/projects/gxde-os/
Primary mirror: https://repo.gxde.top/ISO/
Android version (Mini PC): https://repo.gxde.top/APK/

Changelog

GXDE 25.5 is the single update with the most changes in GXDE history, including comprehensive Wayland support, Qt6 migration, kernel updates, driver upgrades, security vulnerability fixes, and bug fixes. This update touches more than 60 code repositories, with hundreds of new features, patches, performance optimisations, and security enhancements.

Wayland Support Essentially Ready

The GXDE desktop environment can now run entirely in a Wayland session, with all major components natively adapted:

Compositor gxde-wlcom significantly upgraded, supporting session lock screen, screenshot management, global shortcuts, window blur/rounded corners, etc.
Core components such as the dock, top panel, launcher, control center, and file manager all support Wayland.
Tray icons, screenshot/recording, hot corners, screen casting, etc. work normally under Wayland.
Shortcut keys and input method issues are largely fixed.
Login manager GXDM upgraded, supporting Wayland/X11 session switching and a new UI.

Users can select the GXDE Wlcom session at the login screen.

More Components Migrated to Qt6

Over 20 core components have been migrated to Qt6, including: dock, top panel, launcher, control center, file manager, session management, text editor, video player, voice recorder, font manager, system assistant, printer, clipboard, etc. Additionally, multiple Qt6‑version foundational libraries have been added (DFrameworkDBus, gxde-network-utils, disomaster, libdbusmenu, qt6mpris, etc.).

Kernel and Driver Updates

Kernel updated to 6.18.44 / 6.6.148
Introduced MGLRU performance optimisations from the 7.2 kernel, improving zram compression performance and EXT4/XFS IOPS
Fixed multiple kernel security vulnerabilities: Januscape (CVE‑2026‑53359), SCTPhantom (CVE‑2026‑64564), OVSwrap (CVE‑2026‑64531)
Added support for NVIDIA 470 Tesla / 580 / 595 series drivers
Default NTFS driver switched to NTFS Plus, improving NTFS filesystem performance
Supports enabling the open‑source Panfrost GPU driver on the Pangu M900
Added hardware acceleration compatibility layer for the Kirin 9000c, supporting Maleoon 910 GPU hardware acceleration
Hardware viewer now includes driver installation functionality, allowing users to conveniently install driver packages from the hardware viewer

Massive Bug Fixes

Wayland environment: fixed double title bars, input method candidate box misalignment, shortcut key failures, resolution loss after lock screen, etc.
Desktop components: fixed dock tray explosion, launcher touchscreen ineffectiveness/slow response, control center slow startup/position anomalies/keyboard settings crashes, file manager wallpaper setting failures, etc.
System level: fixed Dock failure after switching Wayland/X11, D‑Bus cold‑start crashes, etc.
Numerous application fixes: involving terminal, editor, video player, voice recorder, dictionary, hardware viewer, screen casting, screenshot/recording, weather, etc.

New Components and New Hardware Support

New functional components: deepin-liferaft memory lifesaver, gxde-dlna-caster screen casting tool, gxde-k9 service manager, gxde-sni-server tray service, etc.
HiSilicon Kirin 9000c (Qingyun w515x and similar devices):
- Initial adaptation for Kirin 9000c completed; Wayland session is now usable for daily tasks.
- Added gxde-hisi-9000c-gpu-compat hardware acceleration compatibility layer, providing hardware acceleration for the Maleoon 910 GPU.
- Works with gxde-wlcom (>= 2.1.6-gxde5): the startup script automatically switches to the hardware‑accelerated session launcher when the 9000c kernel is detected; falls back to software rendering if the compatibility layer is not installed.
- 9000C‑specific kernel + compatibility packages + hw‑series driver packages.
- Supports switching between X11 and Wayland (gxde-wlcom) sessions; Wayland is recommended for hardware acceleration.
- Added gxde-hisi-9000c-audio-compat for audio driver support.
Pangu M900 (HiSilicon Pangu platform):
- Successfully runs GXDE OS on the Pangu M900.
- GPU hardware acceleration enabled; glmark2 detects Mali‑G52 GPU.
- Achieved by extracting the device tree (DTB) + enabling the open‑source Panfrost driver + disabling the proprietary Mali driver.
- Runs under X11; Wayland support to be refined later.
Application enhancements: editor adds Markdown live preview, video player native Wayland playback, voice recorder waveform rewritten, system monitor supports Intel integrated GPU usage, etc.