Ubuntu 25.10, codenamed “Questing Quokka,” is now available to download in beta form, giving testers and early adopters a chance to explore Canonical’s next interim release. As with other non-LTS versions, it will only be supported for nine months, ending in July 2026. Canonical suggests that users needing long-term stability stay with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, which is supported until at least 2029.
The beta ships with Linux kernel 6.17 as a release candidate under Canonical’s new rolling kernel policy. This also changes how kernel modules are delivered, with the old linux-modules-extra packages deprecated in favor of linux-modules-version-flavor bundles. systemd has been updated to v257.9, while netplan has moved to v1.1.2.
Developers will notice a refreshed toolchain: GCC 15.2, glibc 2.42, LLVM 20, Python 3.13.7, Rust 1.85, Golang 1.24, and OpenJDK 25. That makes this beta a solid preview of the developer experience to come when the final release arrives.
On the desktop side, the Ubuntu session now runs only on Wayland. Xorg sessions are no longer offered, which will please some users and frustrate others. GNOME 49 is included, bringing small usability improvements, including new app autostart controls. Core apps are also shifting, with Loupe replacing eog for image viewing and Ptyxis stepping in for GNOME Terminal.
Security enhancements include TPM-backed full disk encryption recovery key management. At the same time, Ubuntu Insights debuts as the opt-in metrics system replacing Ubuntu Report, offering more transparency around what data Canonical collects.
Server images in the beta drop some long-familiar defaults like screen, wget, and byobu from the core seed. Chrony replaces systemd-timesyncd as the default time service, configured against Ubuntu’s Network Time Security servers.
Plenty of subsystems and packages are updated as well. Cloud-init 25.3 brings new features for Azure, VMware, and EC2. Django is now at its 5.2 LTS branch. Dovecot 2.4 introduces configuration changes and ends native support for i386 and armhf. QEMU reaches 10.1.0, Samba moves to 4.22, and Strongswan has been bumped to 6.0.1.
Raspberry Pi images see a slimmed-down desktop build based on the “desktop-minimal” seed, cutting out a range of bundled applications and saving nearly 800MB of space. The boot partition layout has also been adjusted for reliability.
Since this is still a beta, known issues are expected. Ubuntu 25.10 currently struggles with TPM full disk encryption in certain hardware setups, GTK4 apps don’t display properly in VirtualBox and VMware with 3D acceleration, and ThinkPad x201 owners may need to boot with nomodeset to avoid freezes. OpenStack Nova is broken under Python 3.13 for now, and Xorg sessions are non-functional in GDM. Canonical says these problems should be fixed before the final release.
For testers, Ubuntu 25.10 “Questing Quokka” beta offers a glimpse of Canonical’s vision for the next cycle: Wayland-only desktops, leaner defaults, newer toolchains, and tightened security. Just don’t expect stability yet… that’s the nature of a beta release.
