Some Linux stories seem too strange to believe, but this one is real. Hannah Montana Linux, a memorable novelty distribution from the late 2000s, is back in 2026 with a modern unofficial remaster.
The new project, called Hannah Montana Linux v26.0, brings back the internet-famous distro as a Debian-based live system with a heavily themed KDE Plasma desktop. Importantly, rather than being built from scratch, it is a nostalgic remaster that simply updates the original joke for today’s Linux desktop.
If you have not heard the story, the original Hannah Montana Linux was a real Kubuntu-based distro themed after Disney’s Hannah Montana franchise. It became famous because the idea sounded so absurd: a Linux distribution covered in bright pink Hannah Montana branding, with themed wallpapers and KDE customizations.
And now, almost twenty years later, the joke has been updated in a way that… well, actually works. The distro is built with Debian’s live-build system on the Debian 13.5 base, and comes with the Calamares installer.
You can run it as a live image or install it like other desktop Linux distributions. The main version uses KDE Plasma 6 (v6.3.6) and SDDM, and most of the look comes from a re-skinned version of Plasma’s default Breeze theme. And yes, there is plenty of pink.
