Questing Quokka Release Notes

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Questing Quokka Release Notes

Table of Contents

Introduction

These release notes for Ubuntu 25.10 (Questing Quokka) provide an overview of the release and document the known issues with Ubuntu and its flavours.

Support lifespan

Ubuntu 25.10 will be supported for 9 months until July 2026. If you need long term support, we recommend you use Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS which is supported until at least 2029.

Upgrades

New features in 25.10

Updated Packages

Linux kernel 6.14🐧

systemd v257.4

Netplan v1.1.2 :globe_with_meridians:

Toolchain Upgrades :hammer_and_wrench:

OpenJDK

.NET

Default configuration changes :gear:

Ubuntu Desktop

New ARM64 Desktop Image

Installer and Upgrades

Enterprise

GNOME :footprints:

Default app changes

Updated Applications

Updated Subsystems

Gaming

NVIDIA Dynamic Boost

Support for new IntelÂź integrated and discrete GPUS

Ubuntu Foundations

Cryptography

Libraries

Package Management: APT 3.0

Ubuntu Server

Apache2

Clamav

Chrony

cloud-init v. 25.1.1

Containerd

Dcmstack

runc

Docker

Exim4

HAProxy

freeradius

libvirt

Monitoring Plugins

Nginx

OpenLDAP

Openssh

Valkey

MySQL

MySQL Shell

Percona Xtrabackup

PHP

PostgreSQL

QEMU

Ruby 3.3

Samba

samba on i386

Upgrading an AD/DC from previous Ubuntu releases

Squid

SSSD

IntelÂź QuickAssist Technology (IntelÂź QAT)

Subiquity

thin-provisioning-tools

Ubuntu HA/Clustering

fence-agents

resource-agents

sos (sosreport)

Ubuntu WSL

OpenStack

Ceph

Open vSwitch (OVS) and Open Virtual Network (OVN)

GRUB2

Platforms

Public Cloud / Cloud images

How to report any issues resulting from these changes

Raspberry Pi :strawberry:

arm64

IBM Z and LinuxONE (s390x) image

IBM POWER (ppc64el)

RISC-V

Known Issues

As is to be expected with any release, there are some significant known bugs that users may encounter with this release of Ubuntu. The ones we know about at this point (and some of the workarounds) are documented here, so you don’t need to spend time reporting these bugs again:

General

  • TPM FDE installs seem to fail to boot after the installation is complete (LP: #2104316). This is an issue with the beta image, and it is projected to be fixed by the plucky release.
  • There is a bug (LP: #2104316) in the beta images that prevents netboot installs in some scenarios.
  • It has been reported that cloud-init may fails to upgrade properly in the Oracular to Pluck upgrade path, see LP: #2104316.
  • The Live Session of the new Ubuntu Desktop installer is not localized. It is still possible to perform a non-English installation using the new installer, but internet access at install time is required to download the language packs. (LP: #2013329)
  • ZFS with Encryption on Ubuntu 24.10 will fail to activate the cryptoswap partition. This affects both new installs and upgrades. We expect to address this post-release with an archive update.
  • Some particular hardware (e.g. Thinkpad x201) might have issues (general freeze, desktop-security-center not launching), when booted without nomodeset (Safe graphics). Follow these steps if you encounter such an issue:
  1. At the GRUB boot menu, press e (keep Shift pressed during early boot if the menu doesn’t show up).
  2. Add nomodeset to linux line, like the example below:
linux /casper/vmlinuz nomodeset ---
  1. Press Ctrl-x to continue the boot process
  2. After installation is complete, reboot, use nomodeset again, like the example below:
linux /boot/vmlinuz-6.11.0-8-generic nomodeset root=UUID=c5605a23-05ae-4d9d-b65f-e47ba48b7560 ro
  1. Add nomodeset to the GRUB config file, /etc/default/grub, like the example below:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="nomodeset"
  1. Finally, run sudo update-grub to make the change take effect.

Linux kernel

  • A bug prevents the IO scheduler from being reset to “none” (LP: #2083845): the fix is already in v6.11.2, and will be part of the first SRU kernel.
  • Support for FAN networking has been dropped in the 6.11 release kernel. It will be re-introduced in the next 6.11 kernel update shortly.

Ubuntu Desktop

  • Screen reader support is present with the new desktop installer, but is incomplete (LP: #2061015, LP: #2061018, LP: #2036962, LP: #2061021)

  • OEM installs are not supported yet (LP: #2048473)

  • GTK4 apps (including the desktop wallpaper) do not display correctly with VirtualBox or VMWare with 3D Acceleration (LP: #2061118).

  • Incompatibility between TPM-backed Full Disk Encryption and Absolute: TPM-backed Full Disk Encryption (FDE) has been introduced to enhance data security. However, it’s important to note that this feature is incompatible with Absolute (formerly Computrace) security software. If Absolute is enabled on your system, the machine will not boot post-installation when TPM-backed FDE is also enabled. Therefore, disabling Absolute from the BIOS is recommended to avoid booting issues.

  • Hardware-Specific Kernel Module Requirements for TPM-backed Full Disk Encryption: TPM-backed Full Disk Encryption (FDE) requires a specific kernel snap which may not include certain kernel modules necessary for some hardware functionalities. A notable example is the vmd module required for NVMe RAID configurations. In scenarios where such specific kernel modules are indispensable, the hardware feature may need to be disabled in the BIOS (such as RAID) to ensure the continued availability of the affected hardware post-installation. If disabling in the BIOS is not an option, the related hardware will not be available post-installation with TPM-backed FDE enabled.

  • FDE specific bug reports.

  • Resuming from suspend on Nvidia desktops (where Nvidia is the primary GPU so generally not laptops) will exhibit visual corruption and freezes using the default Wayland session (LP#1876632). If you need suspend/resume support then the simplest solution is to select ‘Ubuntu on Xorg’ at the login screen.

  • Installing ubuntu-fonts-classic results in a non-Ubuntu font being displayed (LP#2083683). To resolve this, install gnome-tweaks and set ‘Interface Text’ to ‘Ubuntu’.

Ubuntu Server

rabbitmq-server

Certain version hops may be unsupported due to feature flags, raising questions about how Ubuntu will maintain this package moving forward. We are currently exploring the use of snaps as a potential solution to enable smoother upgrades. For more information please read Bug #2074309 “upgrade 22.04 -> 24.04 won't start due to feature ...” : Bugs : rabbitmq-server package : Ubuntu.

Openstack

Currently, Nova Compute is non-functional because of a python3.13 incompatiblity (LP:#2103413).
The Openstack team and Upstream work on it and it will be resolved via an SRU later.

The Ubuntu Cloud Archive is not affected by this bug.

Installer

On systems booting via U-Boot, U-Boot should be updated to the current Plucky version before installation as subiquity does not run flash-kernel and grub-update during the installation. So for first boot the device-tree from U-Boot will be used.

  • In some situations, it is acceptable to proceed with an offline installation when the mirror is inaccessible. In this scenario, it is advised to use:
apt:
  fallback: offline-install
  • Network interfaces left unconfigured at install time are assumed to be configured via dhcp4. If this doesn’t happen (for example, because the interface is physically not connected) the boot process will block and wait for a few minutes (LP: #2063331). This can be fixed by removing the extra interfaces from /etc/netplan/50-cloud-init.conf or by marking them as optional: true. Cloud-init is disabled on systems installed from ISO images, so settings will persist.

samba apparmor profile

Due to bug LP: #2063079, the samba smbd.service unit file is no longer calling out to the helper script to dynamically create apparmor profile snippets according to the existing shares.

By default, the smbd service from samba is not confined. To be affected by this bug, users have to:

  • install the optional apparmor-profiles package
  • switch the smbd profile confinement from complain to enforce

Therefore, only users who have taken those steps and upgrade to Noble, will be affected by this bug. An SRU to fix it will be done shortly after release.

Docker

There is a AppArmor related bug where containers cannot be promptly stopped due to the recently added AppArmor profile for runc. The containers are always killed with SIGKILL due to the denials when trying to receive a signal. More details about this bug can be found here, and a workaround is described here.

PPC64EL

  • PMDK sees some hardware-specific failures in its test suite, which may make the software partially or fully inoperable on the ppc64el architecture. (LP: #2061913)

Raspberry Pi

  • The new gnome-initial-setup has some teething issues:

  • During boot on the server image, if your cloud-init configuration (in user-data on the boot partition) relies upon networking (importing SSH keys, installing packages, etc.) you must ensure that at least one network interface is required (optional: false) in network-config on the boot partition. This is due to netplan changes to the wait-online service (LP: #2060311)

  • The seeded totem video player will not prompt users to install missing codecs when attempting to play a video requiring them (LP: #2060730)

  • With the removal of the crda package in 22.04, the method of setting the wifi regulatory domain (editing /etc/default/crda) no longer operates. On server images, use the regulatory-domain option in the Netplan configuration. On desktop images, append cfg80211.ieee80211_regdom=GB (substituting GB for the relevant country code) to the kernel command line in the cmdline.txt file on the boot partition (LP: #1951586).

  • The power LED on the Raspberry Pi 2B, 3B, 3A+, 3B+, and Zero 2W currently goes off and stays off once the Ubuntu kernel starts booting (LP: #2060942)

  • Colours appear incorrectly in the Ubuntu App Centre (LP: #2076919)

  • On server images, re-authentication to WiFi APs when regulatory domain is set result in dmesg spam to the console (LP: #2063365)

Google Compute Platform

Nothing yet.

Microsoft Azure

  • The current version of walinuxagent relies on python3-legacycrypt for password changing functionality but it cannot be made a dependency due to a component mismatch (LP: #2106484).

s390X

Nothing yet.

Official flavours

Find the release notes for the official flavours at the following links:

More information

Reporting bugs

Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions help fix bugs and improve the quality of future releases. Please report bugs using the tools provided. If you want to help with bugs, the Bug Squad is always looking for help.

What happens if there is a high or critical priority CVE during release day?

Server, Desktop and Cloud plan to release in lockstep on release day, but there are some exceptions.

In the unlikely event that a critical or high-priority CVE is announced on release day, the release team have agreed on the following plan of action:

  • For critical priority CVEs, the release of Server, Desktop and Cloud will be blocked until new images can be built addressing the CVE.

  • For high-priority CVEs, the decision to block release will be made on a per-product (Server, Desktop and Cloud) basis and will depend on the nature of the CVE, which might result in images not being released on the same day.

This was discussed in the ubuntu–release mailing list March/April 2023.

The mailing list thread also confirmed there is no technical or policy reason why a package cannot be pushed to the Updates or Security pocket to address high or critical-priority CVEs prior to the release.

Participate in Ubuntu

If you would like to help shape Ubuntu, look at the list of ways you can participate at community.ubuntu.com/contribute.

More about Ubuntu

You can find out more about Ubuntu on the Ubuntu website.

To sign up for future Ubuntu development announcements, subscribe to Ubuntu’s development announcement list at ubuntu-devel-announce.

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