Canonical Sends Ubuntu 25.04 "Plucky Puffin" Aloft, with Support for Qualcomm Snapdragon Devices

Canonical has released the latest version of its Ubuntu Linux distribution, Ubuntu 25.04 "Plucky Puffin," and with it the first official support for running the operating system on Qualcomm Snapdragon-based Arm laptops.

"Plucky Puffin combines the very latest in open source desktop technology with a focus on making high quality developer tooling readily available on Ubuntu," claims Canonical's Jon Seager, vice president of Ubuntu engineering, of the release. "Ubuntu 25.04 delivers performance improvements across Intel GPUs, and a new purpose-built ISO for Arm64 hardware enthusiasts. Our increasing support for confidential computing with AMD SEV-SNP [Secure Encrypted Virtualization-Secure Nested Paging] makes Ubuntu the target platform to deploy AI [Artificial Intelligence] workloads securely and at scale on both public clouds and private data centers."

The new release bundles the Linux 6.14 kernel, with new sched_ext scheduling system and an NTSYNC driver to boost Microsoft Windows applications running under WINE and Proton, with the GNOME 48 desktop environment. This includes out-of-the-box high dynamic range (HDR) display support, a performance-boosting triple buffering system, and user-facing features including a setting to help preserve battery health and a "Wellbeing Panel" for tracking screen time and application usage — plus a new default PDF reader, Papers.

The biggest change, though, is that Ubuntu 25.04 is the first to come with a unified production-ready ISO image compatible with multiple generations of Qualcomm Snapdragon Arm-based devices. "Qualcomm Technologies is proud to collaborate with Canonical and is fully committed to enabling a seamless Ubuntu experience on devices powered by Snapdragon," says Qualcomm's Leendert van Doorn of the company's work together. "Ubuntu's new Arm64 ISO paves the way for future Snapdragon enablement, enabling us to drive AI innovation and adoption together."

Other new features include better support for Intel's latest Arc discrete and embedded graphics processors, improved manageability and network controls, and support for AMD's SEV-SNP security system on virtualization hosts. "Canonical's continued investment in confidential computing reflects the importance of protecting workloads in increasingly complex environments. With Ubuntu 25.04 now having AMD SEV-SNP host support, customers can take full advantage of AMD hardware-based security features to help isolate virtual machines, safeguard memory integrity, and reduce attack surfaces," says AMD's Frank Gorishek. "We're proud to collaborate with Canonical to extend secure, scalable solutions across enterprise infrastructure."

Ubuntu 25.04 is now available to download from Canonical, in desktop and server variants; as an interim release, however, it will only receive mainstream support for nine months from release, unlike the five-year support lifecycle of the last Long Term Support (LTS) version, Ubuntu 24.04.