Latest Ubuntu 25.10 release pushes boundaries

It is coincidental that October brings forth exciting news of Linux distribution releases, while Microsoft shutting the door on Windows 10 users.

Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu software, has published its latest release, Ubuntu 25.10 "Questing Quokka".

Later this month, Red Hat (now an IBM company) will release its biannual update of the well-known Fedora operating system.

This interim release of Ubuntu comes in the middle of their Long-Term Support (LTS) release cycle. Canonical releases Ubuntu every six months, with every fourth release designated as a LTS version. LTE releases are marked as "enterprise grade" and receive 5 years of guaranteed support. The last LTS was Ubuntu 24.04 (released April 2024). The next one will be Ubuntu 26.04, (due April 2026). Have you caught on to the naming convention yet?

This however, is not an LTS release. Instead, this is a a chance to take some risks and push some boundaries, for the features that will eventually land in 26.04.

While many of the changes are incremental updates - such as the GNOME 49 desktop environment, an updated Linux Kernel, the latest upstream releases of core libraries like Python, Golang, GCC, Rust, Java, plus new set of wallpaper images - there are a few standout changes.

This round has involved swapping out the tried-and-true core libraries "Sudo" and "Corelibs" with Rust-developed equivalents. sudo-rs and uutils/coreutils have replaced those libraries. They utilize the modern Rust language which is a memory-safe by design, ideally leading fewer security vulnerabilities. (Note - this does not mean that insecure code can not be written in Rust.) These libraries serve many of the under the hood functions that other applications rely on, so it’s a risky endeavor.

There are many other announced changes buried in the release notes, so if you have some time on your hands, dive into the blog post noted below.