On September 3, 2026, the Grml team released the new stable version 2026.09, codenamed „Hättiwaritätti”. The live system aimed at system administrators is now based on the upcoming Debian 14 „Forky” and ships with Linux kernel 7.1.8.
New base, new kernel
For years Grml has been a fixture in many administrators’ toolkits: the live system boots straight from a USB stick or DVD and delivers a broad collection of diagnostic and repair tools. With this edition the project shifts its package base to Debian testing, that is the upcoming Debian 14 „Forky”. The installer helper grml-debootstrap now offers „forky” directly in its selection dialog as well. The kernel in use is Linux 7.1.8.
What actually changes
- Booting from exFAT-formatted USB sticks is now supported, as exFAT was moved into the initramfs.
- GNU Screen jumps to version 5.0.1 – the configuration is not backwards compatible, so users of grml-screenrc must migrate or fall back to screenrc_v4.
- The 32-bit i386 architecture was removed from grml-live; amd64 and arm64 remain on offer.
- The build tool grml-live now strictly requires Linux user namespaces, which rules out Docker-based build environments.
The release is rounded out by EFI firmware packages for QEMU (ovmf on amd64, qemu-efi-aarch64 on ARM64), handy for testing EFI bootloader setups inside virtual machines. In addition, GRUB now sources hook files and respects extra boot options. Grml 2026.09 is available as a live image for 64-bit x86 and ARM64 systems.
Sources: Grml Release Notes · Grml Blog · LWN.net
