Last week, we celebrated another exciting milestone: the release of Ubuntu 25.04, named “Plucky Puffin.” Ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes when releasing a new Ubuntu version?
Join me as we pull back the curtain on the dedicated work, collaboration, and unexpected adventures of the release week!
The Final Sprint to the release
Release week kicked off with a ton of activity as the Ubuntu Release Team gathered in the London office.
We started bright and early on Monday, preparing a first full set of images and reviewing the state of the builds. Key tasks involved clearing out blockers, reviewing milestone bugs, and coordinating closely with community flavour teams. Challenges arose quickly - build infrastructure hiccups, delays in RISC-V kernel builds - but the team remained determined.
Daily Check-ins and Collaborative Efforts
Throughout the week, daily stand-ups and end-of-day check-ins became our rhythm. Each team member plays a crucial role: developers pushed late fixes, testers ensured quality through rigorous validation, and the infrastructure team battled build-servers’ issues.
Highlights included resolving critical issues with Calamares just in time, managing a libvirt bug that revealed to not require a respin, and navigating through the intricacies of the release machinery.
Transparent Communication
Transparency and community involvement remain core Ubuntu values. This release cycle, we ramped up our transparency efforts, maintaining a live Release Status Tracker, a public Check list and on the Ubuntu Release Matrix channel, providing real-time updates to our community. The team is constantly monitoring the list of bugs to watch on Launchpad and test results published to the ISO tracker.
Your feedback highlights the importance of transparency and guides us to continually improve our processes and strengthen community involvement.
Release Day Triumph
Finally, on Thursday, release day arrived! After rigorous testing and validation from our committed community, we began pre-publishing the release candidates. Each image owner and flavour lead confirmed readiness, ensuring “Plucky Puffin” was polished and primed for flight.
By the end of the afternoon, the exciting announcement echoed across the internet: Ubuntu 25.04 was officially live!
A Heartfelt Thank You
Releasing Ubuntu is an incredible journey, delivered like clockwork every six months for over 20 years, made possible only through the dedication of the Ubuntu Release Team, community testers, contributors worldwide as well as many teams at Canonical (Engineering but also Web, Marketing, Infrastructure or DevOps teams)
This experience highlights the collaborative spirit, shared commitment and enthusiasm that makes Ubuntu special.
Inspired to join the adventure? Ubuntu’s doors are always open, and we warmly invite you to get involved. Whether it’s coding, testing, documentation, or support, your contributions matter and shape the future of Ubuntu.
We’re already looking ahead to the next chapter: Ubuntu 25.10, codenamed “Questing Quokka.” Planning is underway, and as always, the journey will be powered by our community.
Thank you for being part of Ubuntu. Let’s keep building it together!