The Ubuntu Release Team initiative to release monthly snapshots during the development phase of the next Ubuntu version, as announced by @jnsgruk on “Supercharging Ubuntu Releases: Monthly Snapshots & Automation”, has already demonstrated benefits to the Ubuntu community, including earlier availability of install media for tests and earlier integration test results.
For the past two Ubuntu releases, the Canonical Kernel Team has committed to delivering Ubuntu kernels based on the latest upstream Linux kernel. This was accomplished by delivering 6.11-based kernels for 24.10 (Oracular Oriole) and shipping 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) with 6.14-based kernels.
To better align with Ubuntu’s monthly snapshot releases, the Canonical Kernel Team has expanded its commitment. We aim now to deliver not only the latest kernel release by the end of the development cycle but also to provide, on a best-effort basis, kernel updates based on the intermediate Linux kernel upstream releases. This initiative means that the Ubuntu development series, including the monthly snapshots, should receive more regular major kernel version updates. With this policy, we expect to find potential kernel-related issues earlier in the development cycle, leading to greater confidence in the quality of the final Ubuntu kernel version as we approach shipping the Ubuntu GA image.
As of this writing, a 6.15 Ubuntu generic kernel is available for tests in Questing. The team has already been working on a 6.16 Ubuntu kernel, and with the official upstream release of v6.16 yesterday (2025-07-27T00:00:00Z), we expect to have a more stable version available for testing in the upcoming weeks. For the GA release of 25.10, we are still targeting 6.17 as the final kernel version.
With the new 6.15 development kernel, the Canonical Kernel Team has also rolled out the long-planned deprecation of the linux-modules-extra package (see LP#2042831), shipping all the kernel modules via the linux-modules package, which is installed by default on all systems. This change aims to simplify our build infrastructure and, more importantly, remove the need for some of our users to install an extra package to obtain full kernel support on their systems. The linux-modules-extra package was originally introduced when storage size was a significant concern, particularly on small devices. However, with zstd being used by the kernel as the default compression method, the total install size of linux-modules plus linux-modules-extra is smaller than the previous size of linux-modules alone. We anticipate a seamless transition, but please contact us if you have any questions or encounter issues.