Ubuntu 25.04 Officially Released with GNOME 48 and Linux Kernel 6.14

Canonical has just released Ubuntu 25.04 (codenamed Plucky Puffin) to the general public. This is a stable release but not a long-term support (LTS) release, meaning it will only be supported for 9 months before entering public release. Generally, these non-LTS releases are good for people who want a stable experience but still want to try out the most advanced features.

The main highlight of this update is GNOME 48, which brings features like notification stacking, digital well-being, triple buffering fixes for smoother performance (contributed by Canonical), and many other improvements. This version of Ubuntu also includes a new application called Papers – a modern and user-friendly PDF reader.

To support time zone recognition, weather forecasts, and night light on the desktop, Ubuntu 25.04 integrates the BeaconDB location service. Canonical made this change because Mozilla discontinued the previous location service they relied on.

Another big change in the update is the integration of Linux kernel 6.14. Canonical says the kernel includes a new NTSYNC driver that emulates WinNT syncs, potentially improving performance for Windows games running on WINE and Proton (Steam Play). Canonical also says:

Kernel developers can now use the new scheduling system sched_ext, which provides a mechanism for implementing scheduling policies as eBPF programs. This allows them to defer scheduling decisions to regular user-space programs and implement a fully functioning, hot-swappable Linux scheduler using any language, tool, library, or resource accessible from user-space.

In terms of hardware support, Canonical has provided a new ISO image with 25.04 for compatibility with ARM64 devices. This can be considered a policy to pave the way for Ubuntu to run on Snapdragon chips. Ubuntu 25.04 also brings full support for the Intel Core Ultra 200V series with integrated Arc GPUs and the Intel Arc B580 and B570 "Battlemage" discrete GPUs, according to Canonical:

New additions include improved ray tracing rendering performance on GPUs and CPUs in Intel Embree-enabled applications, such as Blender (version 4.2+). Hardware ray tracing acceleration on GPUs improves frame rendering by 20-30%, thanks to a 2-4x increase in ray tracing component speed. These GPUs also now enable hardware video encoding support for AVC, JPEG, HEVC, and AV1, providing improved performance when using these formats compared to software encoding.

The new update is available for download now on Ubuntu.com. If you already have Ubuntu installed, you can upgrade to this version too.

Jessica Tanner

Update 25 May 2025