he new Ubuntu 25.04 release packs in a plethora of fresh features, foundational changes and user-experience buffs that, in my humble opinion, make it well worth upgrading to.
In this post, I run through the best features Ubuntu 25.04 ‘Plucky Puffin’ has to offer.
From notification grouping and new digital ‘wellbeing’ controls to a more capable OS installer and performance-focused Linux kernel, there’s a lot to love in this latest release.
You can benefit from all of the changes highlighted below from April 17, when Ubuntu 25.04 is officially released, whether you do a new install or upgrade from Ubuntu 24.10.
Read on to learn what makes ‘Plucky Puffin’ a purveyor of personal computer-y perfection!
New Features in Ubuntu 25.04
Ubuntu Installer Improvements
Ubuntu 25.04 brings further finesses to its Flutter-based OS installer, with particular focus on features that help to improve creating dual-boot Ubuntu and Windows setups.
The team says it aimed to “provide additional messaging around the presence of other OS’s on your device and refine the scenarios around ‘Install into free space’ and ‘erase and replace an existing Ubuntu installation’ – a wordy way to say the installer is much clearer about what you’re doing.
Elsewhere, the installer refines its handling of advanced partitioning and encryption, improves interaction when installing alongside existing BitLocker-enabled Windows installs, and buffs enterprise deployments with auto-installation via Landscape.
If you want to create an encrypted Ubuntu installation as part of a dual-boot, you now can. Similarly, other ‘advanced features’, like experimental ZFS installs, are also available when installing Ubuntu alongside another OS.
Finally, it’s now possible to replace an existing Ubuntu installation via the installer (see the screenshot, above). Doing this will erase all files but saves having to manually delete and format the partition and select it for install, as earlier versions required.
In all, a welcome set of updates that makes installing Ubuntu alongside other operating systems, be it Windows or not, less scary and more reassuring.
Notification Grouping
Notification grouping is one of many enhancements Ubuntu users benefit from thanks to the inclusion of GNOME 48.
When an app, CLI tool, or system process sends multiple notifications that dismiss to the message tray, they combine into a collapsed ‘stack’ to make better use of space and reduce cognitive load.
Expand a notification stack with a click (or tap) to view and/or action each notification individually, or condense the list back using the collapse icon.
Dismissing all notifications sent from a specific app or service is made easier by this, too.
Digital Wellbeing Controls
A new Wellbeing panel in Settings provides screen time tracking features and controls — think Apple’s “Screen Time” feature, but on Linux.
The controls are designed to make it easier (for those who want) to monitor, track and perhaps curtail their computing usage habits, set controls/limits, and see periodic reminders to take a break:
- Screen time tracking – See a chart of how long you use your computer each day so you can compare your current usage with past days/weeks
- Daily screen limits – Set usage duration limit which, when reached, sends a notification and, optionally, turns screen colours to black and white
- Break reminders – Get notifications to stand up, stretch, and/or look away from the screen based on a configurable interval period
I think most of us would agree we spend more time gawping at our screens than we’d like to. The new Wellbeing panel in Ubuntu 25.04 gives us the means to cajole ourselves into healthier computing habits out of the box — but it’s up to us to heed them.
HDR Support Available
HDR support in Ubuntu 25.04 is not enabled by default. It can be turned on using a toggle in Settings > Display – which only shows if an HDR-compatible monitor is connected.
Thereafter, any Linux apps that support HDR—not all do at present—can output correctly.
Enabling HDR has a drawback in that that the standard display brightness controls (like keyboard keys) won’t work. GNOME devs have included a software emulated brightness control slider.
Though welcome—and for some, a standout feature—HDR support in Ubuntu is a formative one.
Not many Linux apps support HDR (although the recent MPV 0.40 release does) and it may be a feature you have to enable/disable based on the app you’re using. Basically: don’t expect perfection, do report bugs (preferably upstream to GNOME).
Other GNOME 48 Changes
A selection of other GNOME 48 tweaks improving Ubuntu users’ experience, include:
- Preserve Battery Health mode to help prolong battery capacity
- New windows are centred by default
- Apps are now able to register global shortcuts
- On-screen keyboard visuals have been refined
- Nautilus file manager loads directory up to 5x faster
- Text Editor adopts a streamlined header bar with one menu for all options
- Calendar event editor revamped, speed boosts + more (extended selection)
- Camera is now able to scan QR codes (extended selection)
Papers: New Document Viewer App
Ubuntu 25.04 switches its default document viewer app from Evince to Papers. The impact on end-users shouldn’t be huge (both open and display PDFs fine) as the latter is a continuation (fork) of the former, albeit with newer technologies under its hood and maintainers.
Papers is lacking a couple of creature comforts found in Evince, but as Evince can be installed in Ubuntu 25.04 easily (alongside Papers) no-one misses out — power-users likely prefer a fully-featured PDF viewer anyway.
Visual Changes
Ubuntu’s Yaru icon theme has fixed a visual bug where some types of icons were out of proportion with others. The fix is subtle so unless you knew something has changed, you likely wouldn’t consciously notice – subconsciously, perhaps!
Sysprof, the system profiling utility, has a new Yaru-style icon which, like other icons, inherits the system-set accent colour.
There are new Yaru icons for several non-default apps too, including redesigned glyphs for GNOME Software and EarTag audio metadata editor. On ‘extended selection’ installs, there’s a Yaru-ified icons for the included Camera (aka Snapshot) app.
Per tradition, a new desktop wallpaper is included, bearing the release mascot (a puffin). A small selection of community-contributed background (most also featuring puffins) are included too.
I began this section
BeaconDB Location Service
Last year, Mozilla axed its geolocation service to much chagrin since scores of open-source projects made use of it to handle location-based features, such as timezone detection, in a privacy-preserving manner.
Ubuntu, seeking a replacement, has settled on BeaconDB.
Ubuntu 25.04 now uses BeaconDB to handle Night Light, timezone detection and weather-related features —but only if a user enables location services, of course.
As a crowdsourced effort, BeaconDB describes itself as experimental and cautions that its accuracy may vary based on those who join its mapping effort.
NetworkManager 1.52
Ubuntu 25.04 ships the latest NetworkManager 1.52 release, an update that offers several practical enhancements to its networking prowess.
The most notable changes? Better support for modern internet connections, with enhanced IPv6 networking options that allow users to prioritise IPv6 when possible, and support (in the dnsconfd backend) for DNS over TLS (DoT).
Network Manager 1.52 also adds support for Oracle Cloud configurations, more precise DNS routing, ethtool FEC support, and a further ways to configure network addresses.
Generic ARM64 Installer
Linux support for ARM laptops isn’t as simple as on Intel/AMD devices. Much like Android phone ports, Linux ARM install images tend to specific to the device(s) they’ll be installed on, with the right drivers, firmware accommodations, etc.
Canonical’s engineers have been working to simplify Ubuntu support on ARM laptops over the past few cycles. Effort was put into supporting the Snapdragon-powered ThinkPad X13s as a ‘first target’ and, with Ubuntu 24.10, it did.
With Plucky, things expand further.
The Ubuntu 25.04 ARM64 installer image (ISO) now supports a wider range of ARM hardware and setups including VMs, devices with ACPI + EFI, Snapdragon Windows on ARM laptops, and notably, newer Snapdragon X Elite laptops (often marketed as Copilot+ AI PCs).
The Ubuntu ARM experience remains variable in end-user finesse due to the intricacies involved in the way ARM devices work, and there is a ‘snap app’ gap to fill (though most DEB software in the repo provides ARM64 builds). But the progress made thus far is encouraging.
Raspberry Pi owners should continue using the preinstalled images specifically fine-tuned for the latest Pi devices as they includes hardware-specific modifications, drivers and support.
Linux Kernel 6.14
Ubuntu 25.04 uses Linux kernel 6.14, the latest (at the time of release) stable kernel version. Canonical adopted a new kernel tracking cadence last year to ensure the a new version of Ubuntu includes the most recent kernel possible.
Linux 6.14 features a sizeable set of changes, including improved hardware support (obviously), a stack of performance-focused tweaks (including one that gives Windows games run through Wine up to 50% faster frame rates), and plenty more besides.
On a related note, this release sees the linux-lowlatency binary package retired in favour of a new userspace lowlatency-kernel package. This works with the generic kernel and is able to fine-tune responsiveness at boot time via grub.
AppArmor
Ubuntu 25.04 sees a clutch of changes to AppArmor, the security module Ubuntu uses to restrict program access based on profiles. AppArmor often cause issues for apps lacking a profile or relying on tech that don’t have one, so devs have added new and improved profiles in 25.04.
Among them, a new AppArmor profile for Bubblewrap (bwrap), bwrap-userns-restrict, which is able to set up a create user namespaces and set up sandboxing, before switching to a stricter profile to limit what processes can do inside the bwrap sandbox.
Though these changes aren’t “sexy” they will lead to better security—albeit with the usual hiccups likely along the way as new apps and integrations emerge which aren’t catered for and won’t work as expected due to restrictions.
Nvidia Dynamic Boost
Ubuntu 25.04 adds native support for NVIDIA Dynamic Boost on compatible laptops. This is a power management feature that allocates system resources dynamically (hence the name), redistributing power between the CPU and GPU during intensive workloads.
Or, y’know, gaming.
Ubuntu’s NVIDIA driver package did not include the necessary service file to enable this feature in earlier builds. However, developers approved including the nvidia-powerd service file by default in Plucky – the daemon disables itself in unsupported environs.
What change will this bring? Potentially, improved performance when working with GPU-intensive apps, tools and games. The feature is only active on mains power so it won’t affect battery life.
Intel Arc GPU Support
Lucky enough to be on a device with the latest Intel Core Ultra Xe2 integrated graphics, or a discrete Intel Arc B580 or B570 (Battlemage) graphics card? Plucky offers full support for the latest Intel GPUs, including hardware accelerated video encoding for AVC, JPEG, HEVC, and AV1.
Ubuntu 25.04 also improves GPU and CPU ray tracing rendering in apps that support Intel Embree support, such as newer versions of Blender.
Assorted smaller changes
A clutch of smaller changes in Ubuntu 25.04 which may be of note:
- Startup sound is now disabled default (can be re-enabled)
- Unattended upgrade notification adds ‘ok’ button (in addition to ‘postpone’)
- Support for jpeg-xl enabled by default
xdg-terminal-execinstalled to make changing default terminal easier- Changes to the way tzdata is configured
- Dracut available as experimental alternative to initframfs
Foundations-wise, besides Linux kernel 6.14 which is covered further up this article, the following subsystems and libraries are standard in Ubuntu 25.04:
- systemd 257.4
- Mesa 25.0.x
- PipeWire 1.2.7
- BlueZ 5.79
- Gstreamer 1.26
- Power Profiles Daemon 0.30
- OpenSSL 3.4.1
- GnuTLS 3.8.9
Toolchain versions included in Ubuntu 25.04:
- Python 3.13.2
- GCC 14.2 (15 is available)
- glib 2.41
- binutils 2.44
- Java 24 GA (25 snapshot available)
- Go 1.24
- Rust 1.84 (default, older available)
- LLVM 20
- .Net 9
Some app versions available in the repos (note: some of these will get minor updates over the coming months but these are the versions available at the time of release):
- LibreOffice 25.2.2
- Thunderbird 128.0 (snap)
- GIMP 3.0.2
- Audacity 3.7.3
- Blender 4.3.2
- VLC 3.0.21
- MPV 0.40
- yt-dlp 2025.03.27
- FFMPEG 7.1
- Krita 5.2.9
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