Ubuntu 25.04, code-name Plucky Puffin, was officially released today!
Ubuntu 25.04 is a short term release with 9-month support until Jan 2026. It features Linux Kernel 6.14, GNOME 48 desktop, updated toolkits and applications.
Ubuntu 25.04 Desktop
The new Kernel in Ubuntu 25.04 introduced a new scheduling system sched_ext which provides a mechanism to implement scheduling policies as eBPF programs. There are also NTSYNC driver for better performance playing Windows games through Wine or Steam Play, Microsoft “Copilot” key support, better Dell XPS-13 support, and updated hardware support.
The GNOME desktop has been updated to v48. It introduced new “Wellbeing” setting page, allowing to monitor how much time you spend on the screen, and limit screen time usage.
As well, it added new toggle option to enable HDR, and a battery charge limit option for PC/laptop that support the feature.
Other desktop changes include:
- dynamic triple buffering with significantly improved desktop performance.
- global shortcuts.
- center new windows by default.
- new
gdctlutility to show/set display configuration. - use Papers instead of Evince as default document viewer.
- new
xdg-terminal-execCLI tool to set default terminal. - JPEG-XL support out-of-the-box.
- new official arm64 desktop ISO image.
- initial support for the Snapdragon X Elite platform.
- option to install Ubuntu alongside existing BitLocker partitions (e.g., Windows).
- add back encrypt options for dual boot scenarios.
Other changes in Ubuntu 25.04 include enable NVIDIA Dynamic Boost by default for better gaming performance on laptops with NVIDIA GPUs.
And it added full support for Intel Ultra Xe2 integrated GPU and Arc B580/B570 GPUs, along with improved ray tracing rendering performance and hardware accelerated video encoding of AVC, JPEG, HEVC, and AV1 on “Battlemage” devices.
The new release also includes updated apps, such as Firefox 137, LibreOffice 25.2, Thunderbird 128 “Supernova”, and GIMP 3.0.2, as well as toolkit updates:
- apt 3.0, with new dependency solver.
- NVIDIA driver 570, which will be soon backported for all current LTSs.
- Systemd v257.4, but built without utmp support.
- Netplan v1.1.2 with support for wpa-psk-sha256 WiFis.
- GCC 15 snapshot, binutils 2.44, glibc 2.41. Python 3.13.3, LLVM 20, Rust 1.84, Golang 1.24, OpenJDK 24 GA and 25 EA
For more about Ubuntu 25.04, see the official release note.
Download or Upgrade to Ubuntu 25.04:
Ubuntu 25.04 desktop, server, netboot and WSL images are available to download at the link below:
For the official flavors with different desktop environment, e.g., KUbuntu 25.04, XUbuntu 25.04, Ubuntu MATE 25.04, and more, either go to their own websites, or visit this cdimage.ubuntu.com page.
For Ubuntu 24.10 users, there’s also an official guide shows how to upgrade to the new Ubuntu 25.04.