Ubuntu 25.04 mid-cycle roadmap

jibel · February 21, 2025, 5:11pm

A New chapter for Ubuntu Desktop

Hello Ubuntu community,

I’m Jean-Baptiste, and I’m excited to announce that I’ve recently been appointed as the Director of Engineering for Ubuntu Desktop. While this role is new to me, I’ve been deeply involved in the open source and Ubuntu ecosystem for many years, collaborating with our talented engineering teams to create the best open source desktop experience.

I joined Canonical 15 years ago, roughly spending the first half of my tenure leading Ubuntu’s QA efforts, working on automation, Unity and the Ubuntu Phone, and the second half driving innovation to seamlessly integrate Ubuntu into corporate environments. Along the way, I led the development of Zsys (Enhanced ZFS experience), Adsys (an Active Directory group policy client for Ubuntu), and Authd (a multi-provider cloud authentication service). I’ve also been driving Ubuntu on WSL and, more recently, Multipass.

Now, leading this incredible team, I’m eager to push Ubuntu Desktop even further, bringing innovation, building a powerful, stable and polished environment, and making it more accessible to everyone.

As we reach the middle of the development cycle of Ubuntu 25.04, I want to share our progress on the roadmap and the improvements coming in the next release.

What’s Coming in Ubuntu Desktop 25.04

Desktop Environment

One of the big updates of this cycle on the Desktop environment is the upgrade to Gnome 48. The Beta version already landed in Plucky. Among other enhancements in Gnome, this version brings new features like a Preserve Battery Health mode, which helps extend the lifespan of laptop batteries by optimizing charge cycles, a new wellbeing panel that provides screen time tracking and helps users manage their usage habits, and finally, HDR support.

On the GNOME application side, we are replacing Evince with Papers as the default PDF reader, offering a more modern, and user-friendly experience. Papers provides a refreshed design and improved performance. This transition aligns with our goal of refining Ubuntu Desktop by adopting actively maintained applications that enhance usability and deliver the best experience for our users. Although, this update is going through a security review and might be postponed depending on the time it’ll take to complete the review and address potential issues.

Almost a year ago, Mozilla announced the retirement of their geolocation service, and we had to find a new solution for location-based features in Ubuntu. After evaluating various alternatives, we decided to switch the location provider to BeaconDB. It’s important to note that BeaconDB is still experimental, meaning its accuracy and reliability may vary. While it may not yet be precise enough for applications like GNOME Maps, it is well-suited for features such as Night Light, automatic timezone detection, and weather forecasting. We will continue to monitor its performance and improve location services to ensure a balance between privacy and usability.

We are committed to making Ubuntu more accessible and inclusive for everyone, regardless of age, language, or ability. This cycle, we are focusing on improving accessibility compliance, aligning Ubuntu Desktop more closely with global standards such as the European Accessibility Act (EAA). Accessibility is a fundamental part of delivering a desktop experience that empowers all users, and we are committed to continuous improvements in this area.

Ubuntu Desktop Installer

Our installer is evolving as well. We’re improving the experience for users installing Ubuntu alongside other operating systems, with enhanced advanced partitioning options and encryption, as well as better interaction with existing BitLocker-enabled Windows installations. Additionally, we are making enterprise deployments easier with auto-installation via Landscape, allowing for more efficient large-scale deployments of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu Core

Beyond the traditional desktop, our work on its immutable counterpart, Ubuntu Core Desktop, continues. We are migrating from a monolithic desktop shell snap to a more modular architecture, allowing greater flexibility and customization. This modular approach opens the door for other desktop environments to build their own Ubuntu Core based experiences, expanding the potential of Ubuntu Core Desktop beyond Gnome. While still in its early stages, this effort represents a significant step towards a more flexible product.

Enterprise

For the corporate users, the effort on cloud authentication continues this cycle with plenty of fixes and improvements to authd, our cloud authentication service. It is seeing major improvements including better support for Microsoft Entra ID, a new Google authentication provider and overall improved support for OIDC-based authentication. A huge effort has been put on the documentation of the product.

In parallel, our Active Directory Group Policy client for Ubuntu, ADSys, has been updated to support the latest version of Polkit. Additionally, we have implemented several fixes and enhancements to the certificate enrollment policy, making it more reliable in various Active Directory environments.

WSL

We recently announced the availability of the new tar-based WSL distribution format. This new format allows for easier deployment and customization of WSL images. It removes the need for downloading from the Microsoft Store and images are directly available from our release server.

The documentation has also been updated and reorganised.

Multipass

To complete the developer experience story, we released version 1.15 of Multipass which brings a “Clone instances” feature, an updated GUI client, a new installer on Windows and many other fixes and enhancements.

Additionally, to experiment with cloud features directly on your machine we are adding support to simulate Availability Zones. More to come on this feature in a future post.

Finally, the documentation also found a new home on documentation.ubuntu.com/multipass.

A Commitment to Quality & Community

We know that the power of Ubuntu comes from its community. Every feature, improvement, and refinement is shaped by your feedback and contributions.

We’d love to hear from you. Whether it’s feedback, bug reports, or new ideas, your contributions help shape the future of Ubuntu.

Want to get involved? Here’s how you can reach us:

Join us on the Ubuntu Desktop Matrix Channel to chat with the team and community
Test Ubuntu 25.04 dailies or beta when it’s available and share your feedback.
Contribute to discussions on Discourse, report bugs, and help improve Ubuntu.

With Jon Seager as the new VP of Ubuntu, the future of Ubuntu Desktop is bright, and I’m thrilled to be on this journey with all of you.

Stay tuned for more updates as we move towards the final release of Ubuntu 25.04!

tobhe · February 21, 2025, 9:53pm

Our installer is evolving as well. We’re improving the experience for users installing Ubuntu alongside other operating systems, with enhanced advanced partitioning options and encryption, as well as better interaction with existing BitLocker-enabled Windows installations. Additionally, we are making enterprise deployments easier with auto-installation via Landscape, allowing for more efficient large-scale deployments of Ubuntu.

This is very exciting! Will there be an easy option to enable disk encryption in dual boot/custom partition setups?

mhalano · February 22, 2025, 2:04pm

I have a bug opened since Ubiquity times that I’m trying to move to Subiquity, that is related to full encryption of the disk, including /boot. /boot isn’t usually encrypted when using LVM, but there is a way to do it and put decryption in the GRUB’s hand. I know that’s not directly related, but since we can encrypt all the root and make GRUB decrypt, I think we can do the same with a dual boot system, since GRUB also deals with decryption of Windows partition or, at least, chain load it. Here is my opened bug: Bug #1609424 “Encrypt hard drive with /boot encrypted” : Bugs : Ubuntu

lammert-nijhof · February 23, 2025, 12:45am

I’m an Ubuntu user since 2008. Thank you for your information. I have some remarks,

In November I detect an ISO file for Ubuntu Core and since that time I use it in a VirtualBox VM. I’m 80 and did work in IT since '69 mainly on Air Traffic Control systems, but Ubuntu Core Desktop 24 makes me enthusiastic again. I keep it up-to-date and I’m impressed by the inherent reliability caused by the snap approach. I use it all day, I wrote these comment on it. I know it is an “alpha” version, so I don’t rely on it, I use it for “reading” not for “writing to my files” .
Just for fun, my finance Apps run in snaps in Ubuntu 16.04 ESM, encrypted by VirtualBox and in 2026 I expect to replace it by Ubuntu Core Desktop 26.04. The initial transfer in December 2024 was very simple, because both system used the same App snaps versions .
I miss ZFS in your overview, I use it since 2018 and I store all my data and all my >60 VMs on ZFS. I do not need booting from ZFS, because I boot my desktop from a minimal install of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on a 25GB ext4 partition In the past I booted from ZFS, but the first version created too many snapshots and I hated it. I need snapshots once per week and I create them manually using a script and I do the same with the replication.
I have some suggestion. ZFS can work with partitions instead of complete disks, so allow to install ZFS on the begin of a disk in a partition. I want to be able to install another OS as Host, without reorganizing all my VMs and Data. In my 17 years with Ubuntu twice I had to use Xubuntu or Ubuntu Mate as main OS because of Video related issues.
Make separate GUI Apps for snap creation and another one for replication, don’t put it in the main system. Don’t combine the two, since you might have 2 or 3 replicas with different layouts of datapools and datasets. It would fit nice with Ubuntu Core .
I use VirtualBox on Ubuntu since 2009 after dual booting for a year. I would love to have snaps for VirtualBox, so maybe you should talk to Oracle. My oldest VBox VM “Windows XP Home” has been installed and activated in March 2010 and it survived 2 VBox owner; 3 desktops and 5 CPUs. I still use it weekly to play the wma copies of my LPs and CDs.
The same is true for Conky, since 2009 I used it to keep an eye of Host and VM performances. DeepSeek and I tried to create a snap for it, but snapcraft crashed all the time with one of the most minimal error messages I ever saw. I’ll try it again the last week of February.