First reported by Tom’s Hardware, Linux-based gaming just got a massive shot in the arm thanks to developer Noah Cagle. That’s right, baby: Hannah Montana Linux is back.
Ok, maybe less a “shot in the arm” and more a “completely neutral development”—more on that in a second—but HML is a fully fledged OS capable of doing all the OS-y things you could possibly want, and it won’t take screenshots of your desktop or try to sell you a chatbot either. “If you want to,” said Cagle in his video about the project, “you can use Hannah Montana Linux as your main day-to-day operating system.”
Cagle’s project is an “update”—perhaps, arguably, a “remake” or “homage”—to a 2000s original with a delightfully retro webpage. But the OG Hannah Montana Linux has not been updated since 2009, leaving it unable to access most of the modern internet.
Which is good, because a lack of security updates means it would probably be super vulnerable to threats if it could. Little is known about the 21st Century Prometheus who gave us this gift, nor why they ultimately decided to turn their back on us.
Cagle built this updated OS on the Debian distribution of Linux and the KDE Plasma desktop. For context for my fellow knuckle draggers who exclusively interact with this stuff via Steam Deck, Steam OS is built on the Arch Linux distribution, but uses that same Plasma desktop. The key differentiation for Cagle’s project is that, out of the box, it boasts a striking pink and purple color scheme, custom Hannah Montana icons, and a remastered 1080p version of the original HML’s 4:3 wallpaper.
But can it game? As a skin of Debian Linux, we just have to look to how the parent distribution handles things, which is to say “pretty well.” Bazzite and SteamOS seem to be preferred for gaming largely on the basis off their user friendliness, while Valve’s black magic Proton compatibility layer is designed to work across Linux distros. You can game on Debian, so you can game on Hannah Montana Linux. But you probably want an AMD GPU: Nvidia still doesn’t play nice with Linux.
And, increasingly, we on the PCG staff are getting Linux gaming radicalized, with news writer Joshua Wolens leading the charge. Noah Cagle’s open source Hannah Montana Linux is free for your enjoyment on GitLab, and you can keep up with the developer’s future projects via YouTube.