Flying high: Ubuntu 25.04 'Plucky Puffin' is here to deliver better performance to desktops and data centers
Canonical has announced the arrival of Ubuntu 25.04 -- "Plucky Puffin." This latest interim release introduces a number of updates across the desktop, as well as developer tools, and improved hardware support, with a focus on boosting performance and improving the user experience.
Ubuntu 25.04 ships with GNOME 48, offering new features like a Preserve Battery Health mode, HDR support, and Canonical’s triple buffering patches, now accepted upstream. A new Wellbeing Panel helps users manage screen time, while a redesigned install and boot experience adds improved partitioning options and experimental Dracut support for faster system startup.
Ubuntu 25.04 Beta brings Linux 6.14, GNOME 48, and more to the Plucky Puffin party -- download it now!
Here we go again, folks! Canonical has pushed out the beta release of Ubuntu 25.04, and if you’re someone who lives on the bleeding edge of Linux life, you will want to pay attention. This one goes by the name “Plucky Puffin” and -- despite the typical silly codename -- it’s loaded with big under-the-hood changes and a few surprises baked in.
This new release is based on Linux kernel 6.14, so you’re getting the usual hardware enablement and driver updates. But there’s a lot more going on here than just kernel bumps. Ubuntu 25.04 ships with systemd 257.4, and in a move that may ruffle some feathers, support for utmp is gone. Canonical is also killing off SysV init support in a future systemd release, and cgroup v1 is officially on the chopping block too. Out with the old, in with the whatever-works-now, I suppose.