Canonical has released Ubuntu 25.10, codenamed Questing Quokka, a short-term version supported for nine months, until July 2026.
It ships with the Linux kernel 6.17, bringing early support for Intel TDX, enhanced ARM64 compatibility, and updated drivers for the latest Intel Arc “Battlemage” GPUs. The new kernel also introduces improved PCIe and IOMMU support for virtualization, as well as better RISC-V platform support.
The distribution moves to systemd v257.9, and what’s more importantly, replaces the long-used initramfs-tools with Dracut as the default initrd infrastructure on desktop editions. This change reduces boot complexity and adds native support for Bluetooth and NVMe-over-Fabrics in early userspace.
Another novelty is the inclusion of Rust Coreutils as the new default set of system utilities. They’re faster and safer, though traditional GNU Coreutils remain available for compatibility. Package management also sees a big leap forward with APT 3.1, which introduces a smarter dependency solver and new apt why commands for tracking install decisions.
Developers get refreshed toolchains across the board: GCC 15.2, Python 3.13, LLVM 20, Rust 1.85, and Golang 1.24. OpenJDK 21 remains the default, while LTS versions 25 and 17 continue to be supported. Zig 0.14.1 debuts in Ubuntu for the first time.
On the desktop, Ubuntu 25.10 now runs GNOME 49 and completely drops X.org, with the default session running exclusively on Wayland. The move aligns Ubuntu with upstream GNOME, which no longer supports X.org sessions. NVIDIA users benefit from working suspend-resume support in the proprietary driver.
Two key applications have changed: Loupe replaces Eye of GNOME as the image viewer, and Ptyxis replaces GNOME Terminal. Fractional scaling is improved to reduce blur, and users can now set applications to auto-start after login.
Plus, the Security Center adds TPM-backed disk-encryption key management, while Ubuntu Insights replaces Ubuntu Report as the opt-in telemetry system with more transparent data controls.
On servers, in Ubuntu 25.10, Chrony replaces systemd-timesyncd as the default NTP daemon, using Ubuntu’s NTS servers by default. Container runtimes are refreshed—containerd 2.1.3, runC 1.3.0, and docker.io 28.2—while cloud-init 25.3 adds better Azure and EC2 support.
Popular server components such as Apache 2.4.64, Nginx 1.28, PHP 8.4.11, PostgreSQL 17.6, and MySQL 8.4 are included, along with newer versions of OpenSSH 10.0, Samba 4.22, and Strongswan 6.0.1.
Ubuntu 25.10 is available now for desktop, server, and cloud platforms, along with official flavors like Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Ubuntu MATE. The release will receive updates until July 2026, making it a short‑term release for users who like to stay on the cutting edge.
For more information, see the release notes.
