Ubuntu Cinnamon logo Ubuntu logo

The Ubuntu Diaries
Part VI



Introduction

Adam wearing Ubuntu shirt

This is my account of using the Ubuntu computer operating system, as well as other free software.

On we acquired a used Dell PC to run the Linux-based Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn. Because of the success in using Ubuntu, on we reformatted the remaining Windows XP computer and installed Ubuntu 8.04 LTS on it, going Windows-free.

I haven't missed Windows at all, in fact I have been far better off without it. Linux is free, works better, is more stable and doesn't run viruses or spyware. It does everything I want to do and has been a perfect solution for my computing needs.

Over the years I have used Ubuntu, Lubuntu, Debian, Pop!_OS and Ubuntu Cinnamon, as well as tested Ubuntu Unity, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu MATE, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Puppy Linux and many others. Reviews of those are all here, along with write-ups on applications and other software tested.

I do these write-ups primarily for myself, mostly so I can remember my own "how-to" instructions, as well as pros and cons found, but I post them here to help out anyone looking for information.

I also write for Full Circle magazine and my reviews can be found there. Each archived Full Circle article is also linked from the equivalent article here.

This is the sixth page of my Ubuntu Diaries:

Entries



Kubuntu 25.04

By Adam Hunt

Kubuntu 25.04 marks 20 years of Kubuntu! The very first Kubuntu release was 5.04, out on .

Kubuntu 25.04 came out on and comes with nine months of support, until . This is Kubuntu's 41st release and the second one with the new Qt-based Plasma 6 desktop.

This release is the middle of three interim releases in this development cycle that will lead to the next LTS version, which will be Kubuntu 26.04 LTS, due out in .

Installation

I downloaded the Kubuntu 25.04 ISO file via BitTorrent from the official source and did a command line SHA256 sum check, to confirm that the file integrity was good. This is a very quick check to do and worth the trouble it can save running a bad ISO.

This Kubuntu ISO file is 4.7 GB in size, the same size as the last release, Kubuntu 24.10.

I dropped the ISO file onto a USB stick equipped with a new download, Ventoy 1.1.05 and it booted up without any problems, which was expected, as it is listed as officially supported by Ventoy.

System requirements

The recommended minimum system requirements for Kubuntu 25.04 are the same as for Ubuntu. They have not changed this release and remain:

That recommended 4 GB of RAM is probably underpowered for web browsing today and 8 GB or greater is a more realistic amount.

New

Kubuntu 25.04 uses the Qt 6.8.3 toolkit, KDE Frameworks 6.12.0, has fresh applications from KDE Gear 24.12.3 and features the KDE Plasma 6.3 desktop. Like all the Ubuntu 25.04 series of releases, Kubuntu 25.04 comes with Linux kernel 6.14 and uses systemd 257.4 as its initialization system.

The KDE Plasma 6 desktop replaced Plasma 5 starting with the last release, Kubuntu 24.10. Waiting until the first interim release of the new development cycle means the new desktop version will go through development and testing over these three interim releases before it is used in the next LTS, which will be Kubuntu 26.04, due out in . This ensures that the LTS version, which most users run, is as bug-free and as stable as possible. So far Plasma 6 seems pretty flawless, but this conservative development approach is always the safest bet.

This release is the second to make a Wayland display server session the default, although the venerable X11 server is available at boot-up if needed. Since Ubuntu has been using Wayland for a while now, Kubuntu is being cautious in following and so far the transition seems to be quite smooth. Wayland does provide some advantages, besides just being more modern, like eliminating screen flicker issues.

Other than new application versions, this Kubuntu release introduces almost nothing new. That points to the next interim release and the subsequent LTS being very similar to 25.04. Most Kubuntu users will probably consider that a good thing, as Kubuntu is working pretty flawlessly these days, most users seem pretty happy with it and don't see a need for changes.

Settings

Kubuntu has always given users a wide range of choices and Kubuntu with the Plasma 6 desktop maintains that philosophy. Kubuntu 25.04 comes with five global themes, four application styles, five Plasma styles, five window colour schemes, three window decoration styles, two icon sets, eight cursor styles, three system soundscapes, three splash screens (including "none"), two login screens and ten boot splash screens. As always, those are just the installed options, as most of the settings pages have one-button downloads to retrieve many more.

Kubuntu 25.04 has 68 pre-installed desktop widgets, one more than in the last release. These widgets are small applications that can be added to the desktop, like clocks and weather reports. Hundreds more of them can be downloaded for installation, limited only by your tolerance for desktop clutter.

As with most Kubuntu releases, this one has a new default wallpaper, Nuvole by Krystian Zajdel. It has both light and dark wallpaper modes which swap automatically when you change the window colour scheme. There are 47 wallpapers provided, two more than the last release, including some nice general Kubuntu logo ones. Many of the included ones are from past Kubuntu releases. As is usually the case with Kubuntu, the developers have ignored the code name cliche for this family of Ubuntu releases, "Plucky Puffin", and there are no puffin wallpapers.

Applications

Some of the applications included with Kubuntu 25.04 are:

* indicates same application version as used in Kubuntu 24.10
** supplied as a Snap, so version depends on the upstream package manager

As can be seen, almost all applications provided have been updated to their KDE Gear 24.12.3 versions. There was only one unannounced change in the application mix provided, the deletion of the Konversation IRC client. This probably makes sense as the default applications should be things a majority of users would want and use. IRC saw its peak use in 2006 and is probably only used by a small number of people today. If you want it, you can certainly still install it from the repositories.

As is usually the case, LibreOffice 25.2.2.2 is supplied complete, missing only LibreOffice Base, the office suite's database application. Base is probably the least used component of the suite, but it can be added from the repositories, if needed.

As in past releases, Kubuntu 25.04 does not include a webcam application, an image editor or video editor by default, although there are many options in the repositories if you need those things.

Conclusions

Kubuntu 25.04 has very little new beyond updated application versions. As the middle release of three in this development cycle, I think this points to the next LTS, Kubuntu 26.04 LTS due out in , not having lot of change over the last LTS. So far the most notable introductions in this development cycle are the Plasma 6 desktop and the use of the Wayland display server, which both appeared in the previous release.

Overall I think Kubuntu fans will like what they see in both 25.04 and also in how this development cycle is going. Both point to just incremental changes that just give more of what makes Kubuntu popular: lots of user choice and a very polished experience.

Ubuntu 25.04

By Adam Hunt

, updated

Out on , Ubuntu 25.04 is the second of three interim releases in this development cycle leading to the next LTS, which will be Ubuntu 26.04, expected in .

This release brings a lot that is new behind the scenes, but only a few items that most desktop users will notice.

This is Ubuntu's 42nd release and the 16th with the current modified GNOME 3 desktop. As an interim release, it is only supported for nine months, until .

Code named Plucky Puffin, this is the second Ubuntu release with a "P" code name. The previous one was Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin, which was released on , 13 years ago. Since there are 26 letters in the English alphabet and two Ubuntu releases per year, the letters naturally repeat on a 13 year cycle.

Installation

I downloaded Ubuntu 25.04 from the official source using Transmission to retrieve the BitTorrent. As always, I carried out an SHA256 sum check to ensure that the ISO file download was good. This is always a good practice and avoids trouble later with installation and running.

This release has increased 10% in size over the previous one, Ubuntu 24.10, which was 5.7 GB, to a 6.28 GB download this time.

I tested Ubuntu 25.04 from a USB stick, using Ventoy 1.0.99, which worked fine.

System requirements

The recommended minimum system requirements for Ubuntu 25.04 have not changed since 20.04 LTS and remain:

Overall this means that Ubuntu 25.04 should run fine on hardware designed for Windows 7 or later, although I suggest at least 8 GB of RAM as a working minimum, especially for web browsing.

New

This release does not have a lot new for desktop users, but there is much new behind the scenes.

It is based on GNOME 48 and that means it includes the new user "wellness" settings selector, where you can choose to get alarms if you are spending too much screen time. However, there is no setting for "not enough screen time".

There is also a new Preserve Battery Health setting that allows you to set laptop battery charging parameters to extend the life of your battery.

This release uses (mostly) the GNOME 48 desktop which adds Canonical-developed triple buffering patches to provide higher performance and smoothness on lower-powered devices.

Also used is a new geolocation service, BeaconDB, for automatic calculation of things like time zones, weather and night light features.

This releases uses Linux 6.14, which is part of Ubuntu's new policy of using more recent Linux kernels for more up-to-date hardware support and to bring newer features sooner. It also employs the systemd v257.4 initialization system. Systemd has now been used on Ubuntu since Ubuntu 15.04, so this release completes ten years and 21 releases without any issues. Despite the naysayers, systemd has been a big success.

The Ubuntu Flutter-based installer has been improved, especially when adding Ubuntu to a drive with a BitLocker encrypted Windows partition already installed.

Ubuntu 25.04 also introduces a new developer-aimed feature, prepackaged developer tools as Snap packages, called devpacks. The first one introduced is a new devpack-for-spring snap with the latest Spring Framework and Spring Boot projects, including Spring Framework 6.1 and 6.2, plus Spring Boot 3.3 and 3.4.

This version also includes improved ARM architecture support, including for Snapdragon devices, with an official generic ARM64 desktop ISO. There is also new support for Intel Core Ultra 200V series processors with built-in Intel Arc GPUs and Intel Arc B580 and B570 Battlemage discrete GPUs.

There are also confidential computing improvements, which prevent unauthorized access to virtual machines.

The AppArmor package now includes many new profiles for applications and now has a bwrap profile (bwrap-userns-restrict) to create user namespaces and sandbox creation, before transitioning to a tighter profile that denies capabilities for the processes running inside the bwrap sandbox.

The JPEG XL image format is now supported without the need for any additional packages.

There is also now initial support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) monitors, although it is not enabled by default, plus also grouped notifications.

Ubuntu 25.04 enables NVIDIA Dynamic Boost by default on supported laptops that have NVIDIA GPUs. This feature dynamically shifts power between the CPU and GPU depending on the system workload. In gaming this gives more performance, by allowing more power to be provided to the GPU.

There are many behind-the-scenes changes to packages and toolchains that most desktop users will probably not notice, including:

Settings

Ubuntu continues to only have a few choices for user customization. There are still just two window themes: light and dark, although there is a choice of ten highlight colours. It sounds like not much choice, but it really is sufficient to keep most users happy.

Since this release is code-named Plucky Puffin, it comes with a new puffin-themed light wallpaper, which changes to a dark wallpaper when the window colour theme is changed from light to dark. There is a total of 11 wallpapers provided, of which six are puffin-themed. All the provided wallpapers are quite elegant and tastefully done.

Pro tip: Some people like Ubuntu, but don't like the Ubuntu dock (launcher) taking up screen space. It is actually very easy to disable, which returns it to the bottom of the "switcher" page in the default GNOME-style instead and off your desktop. Just install the GNOME Shell Extensions package via:

$ sudo apt install gnome-shell-extensions

Then open the extensions controller from the main menu, select "Ubuntu Dock - off" and it is gone. It can be re-enabled from the same interface at any time. You can note that the plugged-in drives and trash, which normally appear on the dock, can be found on the GNOME Files (nautilus) file manager sidebar.
Applications

As in recent Ubuntu releases, if you install the default minimal installation you will get only Firefox, Nautilus, GNOME Text Editor and not much more, although any desired applications can easily be added from the repositories. The ISO file includes the extended selection of applications, though, in case you would rather do the full installation. The live session boots up to the extended selection. The choice between the two installation options is really a trade-off between spending your time adding the applications that you do want, rather than removing ones you don't want. My personal choice would be to go for the default minimal installation and then use a checklist to add what I want, using APT from the command line, as it can be done in a single command, if you are organized.

Some of the applications included with the full 25.04 extended selection installation are:

* indicates same application version as used in Ubuntu 24.10
** supplied as a Snap, so the version depends on the upstream package manager
*** indicates included on the ISO for boot-up, but not included in a full installation

Once again, the application collection in this release is a mix of GNOME versions, this time mostly from GNOME 48, with a few holdovers from GNOME 43, 46 and 47.

The only change to the suite of applications this time around is the substitute of GNOME Papers in place of Evince as the default PDF viewer. Papers is actually a new fork of Evince, but uses the GTK4 toolkit and is partially written in the Rust programming language. In testing it, it works just fine.

In the way of application improvements, GNOME Camera can now scan QR codes, GNOME Calendar has speed improvements and GNOME Text Editor has a streamlined header bar with a single options menu.

Conclusions

Ubuntu 25.04 is another solid release with no obvious flaws and we expect no less from Ubuntu these days. The next release will be the last of the three interim releases of this development cycle. Ubuntu 25.10 is due out and should bring the last of the expected changes to be incorporated in the next LTS, which will be Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, due out in .