# Release 23.05 (“Stoat”, 2023.05/31) {#sec-release-23.05}
The NixOS release team is happy to announce a new version of NixOS. The release is called NixOS 23.05 ("Stoat").
NixOS is a Linux distribution, whose set of packages can also be used on other Linux systems and macOS.
Support is planned until the end of December 2023, handing over to NixOS 23.11.
To upgrade to the latest release, follow the [upgrade chapter](https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/index.html#sec-upgrading).
## Highlights {#sec-release-23.05-highlights}
In addition to numerous new and updated packages, this release has the following highlights:
- The default [Nix](https://github.com/NixOS/nix) version was updated from 2.11 to 2.13. In particular, this includes a [small language alteration](https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/8259) in the way floats are represented in `builtins.toJSON`. See the release notes for [2.12](https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/release-notes/rl-2.12.html) and [2.13](https://nixos.org/manual/nix/unstable/release-notes/rl-2.13.html) for more information.
- The default [Linux Kernel](https://kernel.org/) was updated from version 5.15 to 6.1, see [Kernelnewbies](https://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_6.1) for what has changed. All Kernels currently shown on [kernel.org](https://kernel.org/) are available.
- [systemd](https://systemd.io) has been updated from v252 to v253, see [the release notes](https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/v253/NEWS#L3-L659) for more information on the changes.
- Updating with `nixos-rebuild boot` and rebooting is recommended, since in some rare cases the `nixos-rebuild switch` into the new generation on a live system might fail due to missing mount units.
- [glibc](https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/) has been updated from version 2.35 to 2.37, see [the release notes](https://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/Release/2.37) for what was changed.
- [libxcrypt](https://github.com/besser82/libxcrypt), the library providing the `crypt(3)` password hashing function, is now built without support for algorithms not flagged [`strong`](https://github.com/besser82/libxcrypt/blob/v4.4.33/lib/hashes.conf#L48). This affects the availability of password hashing algorithms used for system login (`login(1)`, `passwd(1)`), but also Apache2 Basic-Auth, Samba, OpenLDAP, Dovecot, and [many other packages](https://sourcegraph.com/search?q=context:global+repo:%5Egithub%5C.com/NixOS/nixpkgs%24+libxcrypt&patternType=standard&sm=1&groupBy=path).
- NixOS now defaults to using [nsncd](https://github.com/twosigma/nsncd), a non-caching reimplementation of nscd in Rust, as its NSS lookup dispatcher. This replaces the buggy and deprecated nscd implementation provided through glibc. When you find problems, you can switch back by disabling it:
```nix
{
services.nscd.enableNsncd = false;
}
```
- The internal option `boot.bootspec.enable` is now enabled by default because [RFC 0125](https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/125) was merged. This means you will have a bootspec document called `boot.json` generated for each system and specialisation in the top-level. This is useful to enable advanced boot use cases in NixOS, such as Secure Boot.
- Two changes to `nixos-rebuild` are important to highlight as well.
- Support for an extra `--specialisation` option was added that can be used to change specialisation for `switch` and `test` commands.
- The `--target-host` and `--build-host` options no longer treat the `localhost` value specially – to build on resp. deploy to a local machine, omit the relevant flag.
- [Python](https://www.python.org) implements [PEP 668](https://peps.python.org/pep-0668/), providing better feedback to users that try to run `pip install` for system-wide or user home installations.
- [Cinnamon](https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon) has been updated to version 5.6, see [the pull request](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/201328#issue-1449910204) for what was changed.
- [GNOME](https://www.gnome.org) has been updated to version 44, see the [the release notes](https://release.gnome.org/44/) for details.