Ubuntu 25.10 (Questing Quokka) is an interim release maintained for 9 months until July 2026 and isn't suitable for long term support. But for my purposes its just fine.
TL:DR – Ubuntu 25.10 has a LOT of new features including Enhanced GNOME Remote Desktop!
Contents
Upgrading to Ubuntu 25.10
At the time of writing you have to force an upgrade with sudo do-release-upgrade -d. Wait until early November for upgrades to be enabled.
- If you try to upgrade an LTS release you'll see that it requires another step, that is, to tell the update manager you really want this.
-
$sudo do-release-upgrade Checking for a new Ubuntu release There is no development version of an LTS available. To upgrade to the latest non-LTS development release set Prompt=normal in /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades. - Edit the release-upgrades file to change the value to normal
- Now you should be able to do the release upgrade to Ubuntu 25.10 (Questing Quokka). You'll need to say 'y' for yes a few times during the upgrade. And you'll need a decent network connection as this takes a while!
-
$ sudo do-release-upgrade Checking for a new Ubuntu release = Welcome to Ubuntu 25.10 'Questing Quokka' = ... ... Continue [yN] y - Eventually it will complete
System upgrade is complete. Restart required To finish the upgrade, a restart is required. If you select 'y' the system will be restarted. Continue [yN] y - Thats'it.
$ lsb_release -c Codename: questing
Whats new in Ubuntu 25.10 (Questing Quokka)
Updated packages
- Linux kernel 6.17 - There are many new featuers in here including easier CPU bug mitigation selection, broader compatibility for arm64 desktop platforms that utilize UEFI for booting and many other features, new drivers, improvements and fixes.
- systemd v257.9.
- sudo-rs becomes the default sudo provider on Ubuntu from 25.10 onwards.
- rust-coreutils and gnu-coreutils provided side by side.
- Netplan v1.1.2ubuntu3
- Ubuntu Toolchains upgrades
- GCC is updated to 15.2, binutils to 2.45, and glibc to 2.42
- Python is updated to 3.13.7 while 3.14 is now available
- LLVM defaults to version 20 while 21 is now available
- Rust toolchain defaults to version 1.85 while 1.88 is now available
- Golang is updated to 1.24
- OpenJDK defaults to 21 (LTS), while version 25 (LTS) and an early access snapshot of version 26 are now available
- .NET 10 now available
- Zig is available for the first time in Ubuntu, defaults to version 0.14.1.
- Wayland - Ubuntu Desktop session now runs only on the Wayland back end.
- The Terminal app is now provided by Ptyxis instead of GNOME Terminal.
GNOME 49, “Brescia”
GNOME 49 is included in Ubuntu 25.10. There are once again loads of new welcome features and fixes. Its quite a change.
- New Showtime modern Video Player
- New Papers default document viewer
- Calendar accessibility improvements for keyboard and assistice technologies
- Maps improvements
- Performance improvements
- High‑dynamic‑range (HDR) displays and the Display P3 color space wallpapers
- Enhanced Remote Desktop with multitouch, relative mouse and extneded virtual monitor support
- Other improvements including lock screen media controls, accessibility menu, do no disturb toggle, power connected status, HDR brightness controls, optional Reboot/Shutdown from the locksreeen and sandboxing in GTK apps.
GNOME Remote Desktop
I finally cracked GNOME Remoted Desktop with this upgrade, it was a certificate issue mostly and probably always was, and I resolved it by working on a script to set everything up for me and kept reoubleshooting it until it worked. I wrote it up in this article Working headless RDP with GNOME Remote Desktop on Ubuntu 25.10.
Other updated Desktop Packages
- Firefox 143
- LibreOffice 25.8 29
- OpenVINO™ Toolkit 2025.2.0 66 includes openvino.genai for the first time.
- Audacity 3.7.1 14 comes with OpenVINO™ AI plugins.
- GIMP 3.0.4 12 suports OpenVINO™ AI plugins
