Kali Linux

by - Akshay

February 25, 2026

Kali Linux 2025.4 Release (Desktop Environments, Wayland & Halloween Mode)

Say hello to Kali Linux 2025.4! This final release of the year brings a massive wave of updates to desktop environments, improved performance, and several new tools to the arsenal. Expect updated tools, performance tweaks, and improved support — no fluff, just the essentials.

Kali Linux 2025.4 Hero

Desktop Environments: A Fresh Coat of Paint

This release focuses heavily on the user experience across all three major desktop environments supported by Kali.

GNOME 49

GNOME gets a significant upgrade to version 49. The Kali team has tuned the themes to look sharper and feel smoother than ever before.

  • Showtime Player: The Totem video player has been replaced by the new Showtime app.
  • Intuitive App Grid: The app grid now organizes Kali tools into folders, mirroring the menu structure and making tools easier to find.
  • Terminal Shortcut: Finally, a dedicated shortcut (Ctrl+Alt+T or Win+T) is available to launch the terminal instantly.
  • Wayland by Default: X11 support has been removed in favor of Wayland, providing a more secure and efficient architecture.

GNOME 49 App Grid

KDE Plasma 6.5

KDE Plasma desktop has been bumped up to version 6.5, which brings two major releases of the desktop together.

  • More flexible window tiling.
  • New screenshot tool: Includes extra editing features directly in the capture interface.
  • Quick access to pinned clipboard items in the panel.
  • Fuzzy matching for KRunner: Even if you misspell an app's name, it will still find it for you.

New Colors for Xfce Desktop

With this update, we wanted to bring support for color themes to Xfce, putting it on par with the already available settings in the other desktops (GNOME and KDE). Now you can fully customize the colors of your Kali installation with the new themes for icons, GTK 3/4 windows, Qt 5/6 windows, and Xfce’s window manager decorations.

VM Guest Utils Support For Wayland

Wayland is a modern display protocol that serves as the successor to the older X11 system. Now that GNOME has moved to only supporting Wayland, we wanted to ensure the transition was seamless.

We have tested Kali installations with Wayland as the guest OS in VirtualBox, VMware, and QEMU, and we are happy to announce that all VM guest additions (clipboard sharing, window scaling) are now working perfectly in Wayland.

Kali Halloween Mode

During the Halloween season, we launched a new mode for kali-undercover called Halloween mode, which dresses the desktop for the occasion! While it has been hidden from the menu, you can still launch it from your terminal:

bash
1kali-undercover --halloween2

Kali Live image Is Now Distributed Over BitTorrent Only

Due to the increasing size of Kali images, the Live image (now exceeding 5 GB) will be distributed only over BitTorrent. This bypasses the 5GB limit of traditional HTTP/CDN downloads. The "Everything" image (15GB) also remains BitTorrent-only.

New Tools in Kali

As with every Kali release, new tools have been introduced:

  • bpf-linker - Simple BPF static linker.
  • evil-winrm-py - Python-based tool for remote Windows command execution via WinRM.
  • hexstrike-ai - MCP server that lets AI agents autonomously run tools.

The Kali kernel has also been bumped to v6.16.

Kali NetHunter Updates

The winter season brings snowfall back to the NetHunter app along with several major updates:

  • Android 16 Support: The Samsung Galaxy S10 family running LineageOS 23 now has full NetHunter features.
  • NetHunter Terminal: Fixed and up to date, supporting any Magisk version with interactive mode.
  • Wifipumpkin3: The app now features a live preview tab and new templates for Facebook, Instagram, and more.
  • Live Podcast: Check out the first NetHunter Live Podcast featuring Lukas Stefanko for mobile hacking demos.

Kali Documentation Refresh

We have refreshed several documentation pages:

Community Shout-Outs & New Mirrors

We want to recognize the efforts of community members like @Hackman2381, @Soroush Nekoozadeh, @V0lk3n, and @yesimxev.

We also have 3 new mirrors in Asia (India and South Korea) and 1 new mirror in North America (USA).

Conclusion

Kali Linux 2025.4 is the perfect end-of-year update, bringing modern display protocols and refreshed interfaces to the world's most popular penetration testing platform.

Stay secure and keep learning! 🚀

About the Author

Akki

Akki (Akshay)

"Learning should be a continuous journey."

Akki is a passionate ethical hacker and tech enthusiast. He created this blog to share experiences, tips, and tutorials on various hacking tools and technologies, helping others navigate their path to mastering the cybersecurity world.

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