Summary
Hannah Montana Linux v.26 resurrects the pink distro, now running modern KDE Plasma 6.
Everything is very pink, with Hannah Montana wallpaper and a kitschy KDE look.
Main edition uses Plasma 6 (needs ~8GB RAM); HML26 Lite with LXQt runs on ~2GB.
The Linux community is full of distro creativity. Some distros are created to solve a specific problem, while others are made for fun. Back in 2009, the world bore witness to the majesty that was Hannah Montana Linux, and while it was intended as a joke, it was surprisingly functional. We even gave it a try in 2025, although getting it running after all those years was tricky.
If you missed out and you’re craving a Linux distro that’s very, very pink, then I have some excellent news for you. Someone has made a modern-day release of Hannah Montana Linux, and it has a modern-day version of KDE Plasma under the hood.
Hannah Montana Linux v.26 breathes new life into the pink distro
And trust me, it’s very pink
As spotted by Linuxiac, someone has decided that this day, right now, is the perfect time to release their own version of a distro that came out 17 years ago. That person is Noah Cagle, who uploaded everything you need to run Hannah Montana Linux v.26 over on GitLab. If you’d rather not run Hannah Montana Linux on your daily driver PC for some bizarre reason, you can instead watch how it was made and the end result in Cagle’s YouTube video.
So, what’s it like? Well, imagine KDE Plasma, except everything is pink and Hannah Montana is constantly staring at you from the desktop background. Other than that, its KDE Plasma 6 base should make it a totally serviceable distro for modern-day use, so maybe “I use Hannah Montana Linux btw” will become a thing.
If you’re thinking about running Hannah Montana Linux on 2009 hardware like the original intended, it may not run so well:
The main project uses KDE Plasma 6 and SDDM. Plasma 6 can be sluggish on older machines. Generally, you need about 8GB of RAM to run Plasma 6 comfortably. However, HML26 Lite is a fork of this project that uses LXQt and lightdm instead. LXQt can run comfortably with only 2GB of RAM, while offering a fully capable desktop experience. It’s certainly not as pretty as Plasma 6, but it’s a hell of a lot more efficient.
If you just want to download the OS, you can do so over on its releases page.
Related
I switched from GNOME to KDE Plasma 6.6 and it fixed all my complaints about the Linux desktop
It’s time to move on from GNOME