It was a very interesting year for Ubuntu Linux. Ahead of the important Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release due out this coming April, Ubuntu Linux this year was expeditiously migrating to new Rust-based system tools like sudo-rs and Rust Coreutils, new performance optimizations continued to be explored for bettering the out-of-the-box Ubuntu performance, better ARM64 support with its desktop ISO, and enhancing the Snapdragon X Elite laptop support were among the Ubuntu highlights in 2025.

Out of the 120+ original Ubuntu Linux news articles on Phoronix – and not counting the hundreds of reviews / featured benchmark articles using Ubuntu – below is a look at the most popular Ubuntu news on Phoronix for this calendar year. It will be interesting to see what more Canonical rolls out in the coming months for the all-important Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release. Also if we hear anything more in 2026 about a potential Canonical IPO.

sudo-rs Affected By Multiple Security Vulnerabilities - Impacting Ubuntu 25.10 The Ubuntu 25.10 transition to using some Rust system utilities continues proving quite rocky. Beyond some early performance issues with Rust Coreutils, breakage for some executables, and broken unattended upgrades due to a Rust Coreutils bug, it’s also sudo-rs now causing Ubuntu developers some headaches. There are two moderate security issues affecting sudo-rs, the Rust version of sudo being used by Ubuntu 25.10.

Ubuntu 25.10’s Move To Rust Coreutils Is Causing Major Breakage For Some Executables I noticed a number of benchmarks failing to run on Ubuntu 25.10 this week with reported checksum errors on the files... I quickly realized it’s due to the recent Rust Coreutils transition for Ubuntu 25.10 causing some major breakage for those relying on Makeself archives.

Ubuntu 25.10’s Rust Coreutils Transition Has Uncovered Performance Shortcomings Ubuntu 25.10’s transition to using Rust Coreutils in place of GNU Coreutils has uncovered a few performance issues so far with the Rust version being slower than the C-based GNU Coreutils. Fortunately there still are a few weeks to go until Ubuntu 25.10 releases as stable and upstream developers are working to address these performance gaps.

Ubuntu Provides More Insight Into Their Decision Not To "-O3" Optimize All Packages Since last year Canonical had been investigating using -O3 compiler optimizations for their Ubuntu package builds in the name of delivering better performance for Ubuntu Linux. A few weeks back though they decided they would not use -O3 optimizations for all packages. They have now provided more engineering insight into their reasoning and the results of their investigation into -O3 compiler optimizations for more packages.

Ubuntu 25.10 Unattended Upgrades Broken Due To Rust Coreutils Bug Besides the early fallout of switching to Rust Coreutils on Ubuntu 25.10 causing some breakage, a more pressing issue has been discovered: Ubuntu 25.10’s unattended upgrades functionality for automatic security updates is currently broken due to a Rust Coreutils bug.

Canonical Confirms Ubuntu 25.10 Will Drop Support For GNOME On X.Org In aligning with upstream GNOME 49 expected to ship with X11 support disabled by default, Canonical announced today that the upcoming Ubuntu 25.10 release will also ship without support for running the GNOME desktop on X11.

sudo-rs Is Now The Default sudo Of Ubuntu 25.10 Earlier this year Canonical announced plans for using sudo-rs as the Rust-written sudo implementation by default for Ubuntu 25.10 along with Rust Coreutils and other Rust system components. The sudo-rs goal has been achieved with the newest Ubuntu 25.10 daily ISOs now using this sudo implementation by default.

Ubuntu Maker Canonical Generated Nearly $300M In Revenue Last Year A decade ago Canonical did around $81 million in revenue (2014) with a head count of around 337 at the company behind Ubuntu Linux while their Linux desktop efforts were still gaining a footing with OEMs/ODMs pre-loads, within enterprise desktop environments, and the lucrative server/cloud space. Canonical recently filed their 2024 annual report and they are now up to almost $300 million USD in revenue and a headcount of more than 1,100.

Canonical Decides To Double Down On Their Investment In Java For Ubuntu Ubuntu maker Canonical has decided to "double down" their investment in OpenJDK Java for Ubuntu Linux.

Rust Coreutils 0.2 Released With "Massive" Performance Gains, Production-Ready Ubuntu Support The uutils project today released version 0.2 of the Rust Coreutils as their alternative to GNU Coreutils written in the Rust programming language. This release comes as Ubuntu 25.10 prepares to make use of it by default.

Ubuntu 25.10 Looks To Make Use Of Rust Coreutils & Other Rust System Components Plans have been drafted to begin using more Rust-rewritten Linux system components within the Ubuntu 25.10 release due out later this year and ahead of next year’s all important Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release. Among the Rust components being planned for use in Ubuntu 25.10 is the Rust Coreutils "uutils" software.

Canonical Makes Multipass VM Manager Fully Open-Source Canonical’s Multipass lightweight VM manager for not only Linux systems but also Windows and macOS is now considered fully open-source. Multipass started out as a means of running an Ubuntu environment with ease from a single command on major operating systems. With today’s Multipass 1.16 release candidate, it’s now fully open-source.

Ubuntu 25.10 Beta Officially Released For Testing Canonical today released the Ubuntu 25.10 Beta as they work toward the stable Ubuntu 25.10 release in mid-October.

Ubuntu Announces Architecture Variants: Ubuntu 25.10 Gets x86_64-v3 Packages Canonical today announced an exciting step forward for Ubuntu Linux: the notion of architecture variants and now initially providing an Ubuntu 25.10 archive with x86_64-v3 built packages for enjoying better performance on modern Intel and AMD hardware.

Ubuntu 25.10 Plans To Use sudo-rs By Default For Memory-Safe, Rust-Based sudo With Ubuntu 25.10 Canonical is planning to make use of more Rust-written system components and so far most of that talk has been about transitioning to Rust Coreutils "uutils" in place of GNU Coreutils. It’s also been firmed up today that Canonical is planning on using sudo-rs by default as a replacement to sudo.

Ubuntu 25.10 Moving Ahead With Plans For Migrating To Rust Coreutils Back in March some ideas were talked about by Canonical engineers for Ubuntu Linux to move to Rust Coreutils and other Rust-written system components. Some of this is likely to materialize for the Ubuntu 25.10 release due out in October to allow for sufficient testing ahead of the all important Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release next year. Today the more solidified plans have been laid out for moving to the Rust Coreutils as a replacement to GNU Coreutils with Ubuntu 25.10.

Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS Released With Linux 6.14 HWE Kernel Canonical just announced the release of Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS as the newest point release for this long-term support (LTS) operating system across desktop, server, and cloud.

Ubuntu 25.10 ARM64 Desktop ISO Aims For Better Hardware Experience With "Stubble" With the Ubuntu 25.10 release in October they are aiming to have a better ARM64 experience with their generic desktop ISO thanks to a new improvement they have been working on called Stubble.

Ubuntu Concept 25.04 ISOs Published For Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite Laptops Similar to the Ubuntu 24.10 concept ISOs for Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite laptops, Canonical has begun publishing new "concept" images of Ubuntu 25.04 ISOs optimized for use on the growing number of Qualcomm Snpadragon X Elite laptops. This week marks the release of the new ISOs for enhancing Ubuntu Linux on various ARM laptops.

Ubuntu To Revert "-O3" Optimizations, Continues Quest For Easier ARM64 Installations Canonical engineer Matthieu Clemenceau has posted a status update on the behalf of the Ubuntu Foundations engineers now half-way through the Ubuntu 25.04 development cycle. A number of notable package updates have landed as well as continued work on better ARM64 support and coming to a decision over "-O3" optimized packages.

Many Debian/Ubuntu Packages For Intel Accelerators & Other Intel Software Have Been Orphaned In addition to some Intel Linux kernel drivers being "orphaned" following the corporate restructuring at Intel between developers being laid off and others deciding to pursue opportunities elsewhere, these changes have also led to a number of Intel-related software packages within Debian being orphaned. In turn these Intel packages are also relied on by Ubuntu and other downstream Debian Linux distributions.

Ubuntu 25.10 Enters Its UI Freeze The UI freeze for Ubuntu 25.10 is now in effect as the developers work toward the release of this next Ubuntu Linux installment in October.

Ubuntu Unity In Need Of More Developers To Survive The Ubuntu Unity community flavor of Ubuntu Linux built around the Unity desktop is in a difficult position and at risk for its survival given the lack of developers involved. A call-out has been made in seeking more community developers to contribute to Ubuntu Unity.

Debian 13 Will Aim To Include GNOME 48, Debian/Ubuntu Begin Packaging GNOME Papers For those wondering whether Debian 13 would see the upcoming GNOME 48 desktop packages given the upcoming Debian 13 "Trixie" development freezes, it looks like this updated GNOME release will be squeezed in.

Ubuntu 25.04 Now Available For Download With GNOME 48 + Linux 6.14, Better Performance Ubuntu 25.04 ISO images are now available for download along with the various flavors of this newest six-month, non-LTS Linux distribution update.