Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 887 for the week of April 6 - 12, 2025.
Utkarsh Gupta on behalf of the Ubuntu Release team reports Ubuntu Plucky Puffin (25.04) is now in Final Freeze. Along with details of what this means, we’re also told the RC (Release Candidate) images will be created soon.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2025-April/001372.html
Matthieu Clemenceau makes available the live document capturing the progress toward the release, set for the 17th. A checklist is provided for finer details on individual stats. Feed back is requested on the relevancy of this documentation. Status is on track with various reports provided. Contact links are also given.
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/plucky-puffin-25-04-release-status-tracking/59091
Christopher James Halse Rogers (roaf) reminds us of the move to Matrix for Ubuntu development, and outlines an ‘experiment’ of having SRU traffic in a separate room. It’s hoped this will help Ubuntu contributors.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2025-March/019776.html
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In the past week, LXD received several bug fixes. Highlights include improved shutdown logic, better snapshot handling, and support for downgrades within point releases of an LXD LTS series.
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/weekly-news-390/58727
Times shown are UTC unless otherwise specified. For more details and farther dates please visit: https://fridge.ubuntu.com/calendars/ | https://discourse.ubuntu.com/upcoming-events
Bright Adams tells us “Ubuntu Africa proudly sponsored and actively participated in the Innovate Conference 2025”. We’re told both of the event, what it hoped to achieve, shown some photos, and given an ‘in brief’ summary of Ubuntu Africa’s Impact. Thanks is offered to those who helped the event.
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-africa-at-innovate-conference-2025-defi-ing-the-odds/58678
The following LoCo team events are currently scheduled in the next two weeks:
Looking beyond the next two weeks? Visit the respective LoCo Team calendar to browse upcoming events.
Please see:
Jon Seager reminds us of his prior expressed thoughts on Ubuntu documentation, and continues here the discussion on ‘revitalizing’ Ubuntu Documentation. The focus is started on the Ubuntu 25.10 cycle, with us given ‘The Plan’, a list of resources that maybe useful, and we’re reminded “Documentation is the backbone of a thriving open-source community”.
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/revitalising-ubuntu-project-documentation/58694/
Sharon Koech reminds us “our documentation is a collaborative effort”, and here reveals a “contributing guide” that is geared for Ceph Docs contributions, but maybe useful for other Ubuntu projects as well. The guide “contains details on how to work with Discourse, how you can participate in our Open Documentation Academy, and the way to structure your documentation contributions using the Diátaxis framework. You’ll also find out about the requirements for contributing, the general workflow, how to engage with the team, and how to write (a guidance for writing that includes our style guide)”.
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/contribute-to-our-documentation/58751
Mauro Gaspari has created an event on Ubuntu Discourse for DebConf25, giving us details, and includes an invitation to join the Ubuntu Community at DefConf 25 (Ubuntu is a gold sponsor).
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-at-debconf25/58869
Mauro Gaspari reminds us GUADEC is the GNOME Community’s annual conference, and with this event record on Ubuntu Discourse, we can access details. Canonical is a silver sponsor, and we’re invited to come along.
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-at-guadec-2025/58898
Jack Wallen writes about Ubuntu 25.04 and starts with noting it ‘put a smile on my face’. This article outlines details he noted that caused the ‘smile’, first up is the installer. Next mention is GNOME 48, with special mention of the ‘Wellbeing’ feature. We’re told the experience was good as it worked ‘as expected’. Jack notes surprise at the change of the document viewer (Evince replaced by Papers), gives some thoughts on performance, before moving to ‘should we upgrade?’. Links for more details including download are provided.
Michael Larabel reports on bugs found in the AMD RDNA4/GFX12 graphics, adding that workarounds have now landed. We’re given some details of the problem, and the fix by Samual Pitoiset (Valve), with a quote and a link to the merge should we need more.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/RADV-Workaround-HiZ-RDNA4
Michael Larabel reminds us that Blender 4.4, which recently launched, included improvements in its Vulkan back-end which is hoped to be ‘production-ready’ this year. To help with that we’re asked to help test Blender 4.5 alpha builds, with details provided by a link.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Blender-Vulkan-Help-Testing
Michael Larabel reminds us Ubuntu 25.04 is soon to ship, and tells us JPEG-XL support is now enabled by default. This post gives details.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-25.04-JPEG-XL-Default
"A Joana Simões, a.k.a. Princesa Leia, voltou com muitas novidades sobre o universo OSGeo, conferências com S.U.S.H.I, controladores de jogos fofinhos que podem ser usados para tudo e anéis espertos; o Diogo continuou a espancar verbalmente a Mozilla com uma tábua com pregos, enquanto relatava as últimas novidades de Firefox e conselhos sobre relógios espertos e o Miguel trouxe um bode.?
https://podcastubuntuportugal.org/e343/
“APT 3.0 is Here! What’s New in the Latest Version of Debian/Ubuntu’s Package Manager? APT (Advanced Package Tool) has hit a major milestone with version 3.0, bringing in plenty of visual changes and user experience improvements. In this video, we break down the most important new features and changes that you should know about. Whether you’re a casual Linux user or a seasoned sysadmin, knowing what’s changed in APT 3.0 will help you stay ahead of the curve.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cGxXfw8M7o
This episode, hosted by Noah Chelliah and Steve Ovens, includes an Interview with Jon Seagar (VP of Engineering at Ubuntu). In the section with Jon, Noah asks questions and Jon gives details; addressing user concerns. The Ubuntu section covers uutils/GNU Core Utilities, sudo code change, memory safe languages and why they’re of benefit, as well as coverage of user ‘pushback’. We’re told clear documentation will be provided if we prefer our systems to act like they did before.
https://podcast.asknoahshow.com/436
End of Standard Support: April 2025
End of Standard Support: April 2027
End of standard support: April 2029
End of Life: July 2025
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