Apertis v2026 is here, bringing a significantly modernized foundation for industrial embedded development. Based on Debian 13 (Trixie), this release delivers updated system libraries, development tools, compilers, and core services, alongside a new default Wayland compositor, a reworked SDK, and smarter packaging pipelines. The result is a more capable, maintainable platform designed to meet the long-term stability and security requirements of industrial products.

This is the first release built on Debian 13 (Trixie), incorporating all upstream updates from the new Debian release. For a detailed look at what changed upstream, see the Debian 13 "Trixie" release notes. This rebase gives Apertis a fresher, more modern software foundation while preserving the long-term stability and security update guarantees that industrial products depend on.

Under the hood, the rebase involved porting all downstream Apertis changes on top of the new Debian release, resolving build issues, and ensuring all packages can be built from source via OBS.

Newer LTS kernel

Based on Apertis policies, this release ships the latest LTS kernel, Linux LTS 6.18 which brings lots of interesting features that have mainlined upstream. For this release, Collabora also added valuable contributions, including more support for Rockchip and MediaTek SoCs families.

Weston as the default Wayland compositor

Starting with the v2026.0 milestone, Weston becomes the default Wayland compositor in Apertis images (see the Apertis v2026.0 release notes).

Weston is the reference implementation of a Wayland compositor and provides a flexible and standards-based graphical foundation. Making Weston the default compositor offers several advantages:

• A well-supported and widely adopted Wayland implementation
• Support for multiple shell configurations (such as desktop and kiosk use cases)
• Easier extensibility and long-term maintainability through a strong upstream community

This change modernizes the graphical stack and better positions Apertis for future graphical and HMI requirements in industrial environments.

SDK image rework

Apertis v2026 introduces a reworked SDK image that improves the developer experience for building, testing, and integrating Apertis-based systems. Details of this change are available in the Apertis v2026.0 release notes.

Key goals of the SDK image rework include:

• Cleaner separation between host and target tooling to improve cross-compilation workflows
• Better alignment of SDK contents with the Debian Trixie base and current image policies
• Improved usability as a development sandbox for package maintenance and image customization

These changes reduce friction for developers and integrators who rely on the SDK as their primary environment for Apertis development.

Improved package pipelines

This work builds on improvements introduced throughout the v2026 development cycle, as documented in the Apertis v2026 release notes.

Apertis v2026 introduces improvements in ci-package-builder designed to improve how maintainers manage Debian-derived packages across Apertis releases.

These pipelines make it possible to:

• Automatically track changes from Debian as packages evolve upstream
• Identify relevant updates, including security fixes and targeted improvements
• Backport selected changes to older Apertis releases in a controlled and auditable way - Reduce manual effort when maintaining multiple stable release branches

By automating much of the work involved in tracking and managing Debian changes, these pipelines allow maintainers to focus on review and validation, while ensuring Apertis stays closely aligned with Debian over the long term.

Besides the automation itself, the new version provides a much cleaner separation between release-independent functionality, such as update processing, from release-specific tasks, like license scanning and package building. Thanks to these changes the pipelines behave consistently across all the releases.

More tooling for rebase on top of Forky

As a result of the rebase process, the infrastructure and tooling have evolved to make the workflow more predictable and easier to track. This includes improvements across the entire process, from the planning stage — where the list of packages to be rebased, imported, or dropped is reviewed — to tracking progress during the rebase itself.

The tooling also supports testing critical stages such as bootstrapping and image generation, while prioritizing the set of packages required to build the target images.

These tools can be found in:

• https://gitlab.apertis.org/infrastructure/apertis-infrastructure/-/tree/main/rebase-scripts?ref_type=heads
• https://gitlab.apertis.org/infrastructure/germinate/
• https://gitlab.apertis.org/infrastructure/rebase-image-test

Looking ahead

For a complete and continuously updated list of changes, please refer to the official Apertis v2026 release notes.

With its Debian Trixie foundation, modernized graphical stack, improved SDK, and smarter packaging workflows, Apertis v2026 represents a significant step forward for the platform.