Shelly ALPM v3.2.0, codenamed "The Bug Bash," shipped today as a targeted bug-fix pass over one of the project's most aggressive rewrite cycles. It follows the introduction of RLPM, a from-scratch Zig reimplementation of Arch's libalpm that Shelly quietly developed while it became CachyOS's default package manager. The release corrects real regressions, including a Flatpak elevation break, a stuck tray icon, broken restart detection, and flaky AUR builds, while tucking in features like multi-package downgrades and live download-speed readouts. It's not a feature-heavy update, but the project's candor about its still-incomplete libalpm compatibility makes it worth paying attention to as it now serves hundreds of thousands of users.
Liquorix maintainer Steven Barrett tagged kernel 7.2-25 on GitHub November 4, another release built on top of upstream Linux 7.2.15. The release centers on four patches to the custom sched/alt scheduler that tighten task placement on cores and refine "sleep credit" priority boosts. It's a maintenance and refinement release rather than a feature bump, aimed at shaving microseconds off wake latency to make interactive workloads feel snappier. Liquorix remains a single-maintainer, AMD64-only kernel that improves responsiveness in gaming and A/V production while trading some raw throughput.
Liquorix 7.2-24 landed today, bundled with Linux 7.2.15, the very last 7.2 release Greg Kroah-Hartman will ever ship. That makes it the final 7.2-based build from the solo-maintainer project before the branch is retired in favor of 7.3. The release also carries a notable AI angle: two of the five commits advancing it are co-authored with Claude, mirroring "Assisted-by: Claude" tags already present in the upstream 7.2.15 fixes. Since the 7.2 branch is now end-of-life, users should upgrade to the upcoming 7.3 track or an LTS line before their current kernel goes stale.
Liquorix 7.2-23 dropped on November 2, 2026, from maintainer Steven Barrett, merging upstream Linux 7.2.14 into the low-latency enthusiast kernel. It's a clean-merge catch-up release with no new custom patches, preserving all of Liquorix's aggressive responsiveness tuning. The build rides on Linux 7.2's cache-aware scheduling and improved I/O, both of which pair naturally with its gaming and audio/video focus. The free kernel targets AMD64 desktops, and you can install it with a single script from liquorix.net.
Arch Linux has published its 2026.11.01 rolling-release snapshot, built around the fresh Linux 7.2.11 kernel in a lean 1.2 GB x86-64 ISO. The image is meant for new installations only, since existing users can stay current with a single pacman -Syu. It inherits the improved Archinstall 4.5 guided installer plus critical security fixes, including PHP RCE patches and compromised CA certificate removals.
Seafoam Labs has released Shelly-ALPM v3.1.10, a refinement release that focuses on more reliable AUR builds, cleaner upgrade dependency resolution, and clearer error messages for its native RLPM engine. RLPM is Shelly's from-scratch Zig reimplementation of libalpm, the library pacman runs on, and it remains work-in-progress with full parity still tracked in a public ledger. The update also adds a shell-style progress bar, a --names-only flag, and fixes for GitHub-triggered download failures and ignored-package config leaks. Built for Arch-based systems and already the default in CachyOS, Shelly is available via the AUR, CachyOS, or from source with Zig 0.17.0.
Liquorix maintainer Steven Barrett shipped kernel 7.2-22 on Monday, October 26, 2026, cleanly merging upstream Linux 7.2.13 with the project's usual low-latency Zen tuning and no experimental patches. The quiet release serves as a sensible capstone to a whirlwind fortnight during which Liquorix put out five builds, including 7.2-20, which briefly folded server-class MGLRU-FG memory research into a desktop gaming kernel. Liquorix is an AMD64-only, pre-patched kernel that trades raw throughput and battery life for snappier interactive responsiveness, making it a fit for gamers and A/V producers but not servers or real-time workloads. To install it, users can run the official one-line script or set up the amd64-only repo manually, keeping an older kernel in GRUB as a fallback.
Shelly 3.1.9, released 23 October 2026, adds "in-place file migration" to RLPM, its from-scratch Zig package engine that lets a new package adopt files already on your system without overwriting them. The feature matters most when one package replaces another, avoiding the old .pacnew/.pacsave nag-and-merge dance, though it only works on RLPM rather than the default libalpm backend. RLPM reached full native maturity just three weeks earlier in v3.1.7, anchoring Shelly as the package-management layer of Seafoam Labs' wider Devario desktop stack.
Liquorix 7.2-21 released on October 21, 2026, built on top of stable Linux 7.2.12 with maintainer Steven Barrett's usual low-latency tuning. Its headline change upgrades the compressed-swap system to "zswap v4 and zram v5," folding in four upstream patches that cut lock contention and speed up memory swapping when RAM runs tight. It's deliberately the most conservative of the project's recent builds, stepping away from the experimental MGLRU-FG memory code shipped in 7.2-20. Gamers and multimedia users can install it via a one-line script.
Shelly ALPM v3.1.8 has been released as a stability patch that fixes an undefined sqlite3_open_v2 symbol which had broken its from-scratch Zig reimplementation of Arch's libalpm engine, known as RLPM. The fix lands on top of the feature-heavy 3.1.7 release, making the native engine actually runnable in the binaries users install. Developed by Seafoam Labs, Shelly is a GTK4-native package manager that has become the default GUI front-end on CachyOS and gathered roughly 1.2k GitHub stars. The project remains honest that complete libalpm parity is unfinished, tracked in a public compatibility ledger, and it ships as split packages with both dual-backend and RLPM-only builds.
Liquorix maintainer Steven Barrett released two kernels on Friday, October 16, 2026, within about an hour of each other. The first, 7.2-19, is a clean merge of the new Linux 7.2.11 stable release. The second, 7.2-20, adds Kairui Song's MGLRU Frequency Guided v4 patch set, a server-oriented memory-management technology reaching a desktop gaming kernel for the first time. Reported benchmarks show +10% to 40% gains, but those tests ran against database and Android workloads, leaving its real impact on gaming and audio boxes unproven.
Shelly ALPM 3.1.7, released today by Seafoam Labs, introduces RLPM, a native Zig reimplementation of Arch's libalpm that can dispatch package operations alongside the original library. Written under lead engineer Zoey Bauer, RLPM handles the full ALPM workflow while still letting users fall back to libalpm, though the authors openly admit complete compatibility remains unfinished. The project reached well beyond early adopters after CachyOS made Shelly its default GUI package manager in April 2026, amplifying RLPM's impact across a large out-of-the-box user base. With safety features like sealed memfd archives, Landlock/seccomp sandboxing, and openat2 path confinement, Shelly pairs an aggressive rewrite arc with surprisingly honest calls about its own limits.
Liquorix kernel maintainer Steven Barrett (damentz) tagged version 7.2-18 on October 12, riding upstream Linux 7.2.10 with a focused batch of seventeen patches targeting zswap and zram memory compression. The release trims latency-inducing waste in how the system compresses and decompresses RAM-backed swap, staying true to Liquorix's job of keeping interactive systems snappy rather than chasing raw throughput.
Liquorix tagged its newest kernel build, 7.2-17 today, sitting on top of upstream Linux 7.2.10. It's really a maintenance release: the changelog is just "merge v7.2.10" plus a version bump, carrying forward the real feature work from last week's 7.2-16, which added a boot-switchable "PDS sleep credit." The enthusiast kernel swaps in the custom Project-C/PDS scheduler, a 1000 Hz tick, and full preemption for snappier interactive performance, though that comes at a cost to raw throughput. Available for Debian, Ubuntu, and Arch on AMD64 only, it suits gamers and power users who want responsiveness but isn't a fit for set-and-forget servers.
Liquorix maintainer Steven Barrett released kernel build 7.2-16 on October 6, 2026, built on top of upstream Linux 7.2.9. The update centers on Project-C scheduler refinements and adds a boot switch so users can toggle the PDS sleep credit without recompiling. It also wires the sleep credit into the ZEN Interactive profile and reads a fresh timestamp for wakeup deadlines. Available for AMD64 on Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, and Fedora, the kernel targets gamers and audio producers who value responsiveness over throughput.
Liquorix maintainer Steven Barrett shipped 7.2-15 today, updating the enthusiast kernel to track upstream Linux 7.2.9. The three-line changelog also undoing a Project-C scheduler tweak called "sched/alt" that Barrett had added just five days earlier in 7.2-14. The quick add-and-revert cycle highlights how Liquorix functions as a live testing ground for scheduler experiments that could eventually influence upstream Linux. It remains a free, AMD64-only build installed via a one-line script or your distro's package system.
Arch Linux has published its tenth monthly install image of the year, 2026.10.01, a 1.5 GB x86_64 snapshot built around the Linux 7.2.7 kernel. Because Arch is a rolling release, the image is really just a dated capture of the project's repositories, so existing users are told to stay current with a simple pacman -Syu rather than reinstalling. The same ISO bundles archinstall 4.5, which adds aarch64 bootloader support and fixes some long-standing installer annoyances. It arrives as a 24-year-old project with re-elected lead Levente Polyák and a package ecosystem spanning over 64,000 official and AUR entries.
Liquorix, the enthusiast Linux kernel, has shipped version 7.2-14, built on upstream Linux 7.2.8 and tagged October 1, 2026. The headline change lets a coupled waker/wakee thread pair alternate across busy cores instead of starving each other on one SMT slot, targeting fully loaded multithreaded systems where no core is idle. A secondary tweak enables VIDEO_INTEL_CVS for broader Intel camera and media support, while security fixes like CVE-2026-43494 get backported from upstream. Install it with the official script across Debian, Ubuntu, and Arch, though builds target AMD64 only.
Archinstall, the guided installer for Arch Linux, released version 4.5 on September 29, 2026, shipping 131 commits since its previous release. The headline addition is AArch64 support for GRUB and Limine EFI bootloaders, closing the installer's biggest platform gap and letting 64-bit ARM machines use the same guided flow. It also turns on TLS verification for network fetches, moves Wayland compositors to systemd-logind, adds real-time kernel variants, and introduces three new languages: Norwegian Bokmål, Serbian, and Vietnamese. With 21 contributors, including 14 first-timers, the update leans more on security, maintainability, and standardized releases than flashy new features.
Steven Barrett released Liquorix Linux Kernel 7.2-13, merging upstream Linux 7.2.8 and bumping the package version to 7.2.8-1. Unlike most of its 7.x siblings, this point release adds no fresh Project-C scheduler patches, since those got baked in across releases 7.2-1 through 7.2-12. The build still carries forward the project's signature interactive tuning, including SMT-aware scheduling, Zen Interactive frequency defaults, and the dmem-ttm-v8 VRAM patchset.
