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Linux

Is PQC enabled? — quick check

Linux shell

# 1) No-dependency check — identify this Linux system first.
. /etc/os-release; echo "$PRETTY_NAME"

# 1) No-dependency check — identify this machine first.
uname -a 2>/dev/null || true

# 2) Dependency check — prompt before installing anything.
if ! command -v openssl >/dev/null 2>&1; then
  echo 'OpenSSL was not found. A local PQC proof needs OpenSSL 3.5+.'
  printf 'Install OpenSSL now? [y/N] '
  read answer
  case "$answer" in
    [Yy]*)
      if command -v brew >/dev/null 2>&1; then brew install openssl@3
      elif command -v apt-get >/dev/null 2>&1; then sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y openssl
      elif command -v dnf >/dev/null 2>&1; then sudo dnf install -y openssl
      elif command -v yum >/dev/null 2>&1; then sudo yum install -y openssl
      else echo 'No supported package manager found. Install OpenSSL 3.5+ and retry.'; exit 1
      fi ;;
    *) echo 'Install OpenSSL 3.5+ and retry for a local PQC proof.'; exit 1 ;;
  esac
fi

OPENSSL=openssl
if command -v brew >/dev/null 2>&1; then
  BREW_OPENSSL="$(brew --prefix openssl@3 2>/dev/null)/bin/openssl"
  [ -x "$BREW_OPENSSL" ] && OPENSSL="$BREW_OPENSSL"
fi

$OPENSSL version
if ! $OPENSSL list -tls-groups 2>/dev/null | grep -qiE 'X25519MLKEM768|MLKEM|Kyber'; then
  echo 'This OpenSSL does not advertise ML-KEM groups. Upgrade to OpenSSL 3.5+ or load oqsprovider, then retry.'
  exit 1
fi
$OPENSSL list -kem-algorithms 2>/dev/null | grep -iE 'mlkem|kyber'   || echo 'no native ML-KEM KEM listing, but TLS group support was found above'
$OPENSSL list -providers 2>/dev/null | grep -i oqs || true

# 3) Live handshake — fully local. checkpqc.app is a known-PQ target;
#    swap it for any host you want to test.
$OPENSSL s_client -connect checkpqc.app:443 -tls1_3 -groups X25519MLKEM768   </dev/null 2>&1 | grep -E 'Negotiated TLS1\.3 group|Cipher is|alert'

Expected when PQC is ON

Fedora Linux 41 (Workstation Edition)
OpenSSL 3.5.0 8 Apr 2025
  X25519MLKEM768 @ default
Negotiated TLS1.3 group: X25519MLKEM768
New, TLSv1.3, Cipher is TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384

What you'll see when PQC is OFF

Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS
OpenSSL 3.0.13 30 Jan 2024
no native ML-KEM
# (no oqsprovider line) — install OpenSSL 3.5+ or oqsprovider

Linux is the easiest desktop/server target for PQC TLS, because almost everything delegates TLS to the system OpenSSL. The question is which OpenSSL your distro ships.

Debian / Ubuntu

RHEL / Fedora

Arch / openSUSE Tumbleweed

Build your own OpenSSL 3.5

curl -fsSL https://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-3.5.0.tar.gz | tar xz
cd openssl-3.5.0
./Configure --prefix=/opt/openssl-pqc enable-mlkem
make -j$(nproc) && sudo make install_sw
# Pin it for one shell
export PATH=/opt/openssl-pqc/bin:$PATH
openssl version

Wire oqsprovider for distro OpenSSL 3.0/3.3

sudo apt install liboqs-dev
git clone https://github.com/open-quantum-safe/oqs-provider
cd oqs-provider && cmake -S . -B build && cmake --build build
sudo cp build/lib/oqsprovider.so /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ossl-modules/
# /etc/ssl/openssl.cnf
# [provider_sect]
# default = default_sect
# oqsprovider = oqsprovider_sect
# [oqsprovider_sect]
# activate = 1

What inherits PQC for free

curl, wget, Python ssl, PHP, Apache, nginx (with the right ssl_conf_command), Postfix, Dovecot, OpenVPN, Postgres TLS, MySQL TLS, etcd, MinIO — anything that links libssl picks up new groups once OpenSSL is upgraded and groups are configured.

Run the check on your Linux box's services →