Six months after the previous 25.05 “Warbler” release, the new stable version, NixOS 25.05 “Xantusia,” is officially here. Targeted at advanced users and developers, NixOS bets on an immutable design and an atomic update model, emphasizing reproducibility and reliability with the Nix package manager.
Nixpkgs adds 7,002 new packages and updates 25,252 existing entries. A cleanup effort removed 6,338 outdated packages to keep the repository manageable and secure. On the NixOS side, the release introduces 107 new modules, adds 1,778 configuration options, and removes older, unused components.
The desktop stack is updated to GNOME 49. This version ends X11 session availability, includes a new video player and document viewer, and ships a redesigned calendar application. Other applications across the GNOME suite receive updates as part of the regular upstream cycle.
As others have commented, the article is a little misleading. Especially to those not familiar with NixOS:
These changes have been made available through packages in the nixpkgs repo, branched to the 25.11 release.
However, NixOS doesn’t “stack” GNOME into it. Nor does it carry specific Linux kernels “under the hood”.
You can pin any version of any release of any listed package (including kernels) from the nixpkgs repo to your configuration. More specifically even with Flakes, but that’s not even required, if that isn’t your thing.
So for example, I am running a specific host with NixOS 25.11, and Linux kernel 6.17.58 (LTS). (There is a specific use case for me to do so on that particular host.) This runs out of the box due to how I’ve configured NixOS, which is precisely the point of Nix, you configure it how you want it.