Lubuntu 25.10 (Questing Quokka) Released!
The Lubuntu Team is proud to announce Lubuntu 25.10, codenamed Questing Quokka. Lubuntu 25.10 is the 29th release of Lubuntu, the 15th release of Lubuntu with LXQt as the default desktop environment.
Download and Support Lifespan
With 25.10 being an interim release, it will follow the standard non-LTS support period of nine months; this means that Lubuntu 25.10 will be supported until July 2026. Our development focus going forward will be on Lubuntu 26.04 and future releases, so only critical bugfixes and security updates will be provided. If you’re a 25.04 user, please upgrade to 25.10 as soon as possible.
Installation
New in Lubuntu 25.10
LXQt
LXQt 2.2 is now shipped by default. More information on its release can be found here: 2.2.0
rust-coreutils
Starting in Ubuntu 25.10, Ubuntu now uses the uutils Rust implementation of coreutils in place of the standard GNU coreutils. uutils is intended to be fully GNU-compatible, but reimplements the entire suite of OS components in Rust, providing better memory safety and (hopefully!) more robust code where the OS needs it most. As with any major change, this is not entirely without risk, and it is possible that users could see core system tools behave differently than they used to. If you notice a core system utility break or behave differently than expected, please file a bug report against rust-coreutils.
Note that findutils and diffutils have NOT been replaced with their Rust equivalents from uutils yet. find, xargs, and diff are still the original GNU versions, written in C.
sudo-rs
Along with coreutils, another important package that has been replaced with a Rust rewrite is sudo. Unlike uutils’ rust-coreutils however, sudo-rs is NOT fully drop-in compatible with the original sudo, and omits some features the developers have deemed to be “largely unused” or “only available for legacy platforms”. In particular, the -E option for passing through the current environment to the application executed with sudo is ignored by sudo-rs, and thus sudo -E application will oftentimes misbehave. Please be mindful of these changes if you notice sudo or a script or application that depends on it not behaving as expected.
Known Issues
- When doing an OEM installation of Lubuntu, the system will not be able to enter the first-time user setup wizard unless you run “sudo apt install calamares” in a terminal within the OEM setup environment. Bug link.
- If your system chooses to use the text-only bootup splash screen rather than the graphical splash screen for some reason, it will erroneously report that you are running Lubuntu 25.04. Bug link.
- When installing onto a BIOS system with manual partitioning, one must select a non-default bootloader installation location on the manual partitioning screen, then re-select the default bootloader installation location. Failure to do so will result in an unbootable system. Bug link.
Common Release Notes
Please also check the Ubuntu Release Notes for more common issues and bugs affecting all Ubuntu flavors.
Technical Notes
Despite our original plans laid out in the 25.04 release announcement, Lubuntu 25.10 has ended up being a semi-boring release. We had substantially less development manpower than we’ve had for previous releases, thus our primary focus has been keeping Lubuntu working as well as it has worked historically, rather than innovating new features. As such, Lubuntu 25.10 continues to use the X11 display server, provides mostly the same set of apps as previous releases, uses the same theming, etc.
Some our our plans related to Wayland have changed as a result of this lessened manpower. Despite having prepared to switch to the Miriway compositor early on in Questing Quokka’s development, we do not have developers with sufficient amounts of free time to continue driving this initiative. Our current plans are to switch from X11 to labwc by default in 26.04, as labwc is a stable, well-established, Openbox-like Wayland compositor that we have experience with. We would love to use Miriway instead, but it simply isn’t feasible unless developers with sufficient experience and time are willing to help us make it happen.
We need help with development. Lubuntu is effectively in “maintenance mode” at this point, but we’d like to get back to developing full-speed. If you have spare time and wanted to get into open source development, please introduce yourself, we need you! The most vital areas we need help with are continuous testing of all of the features our installer offers, and fixing bugs discovered during that testing. Our developers are generally low on time, but can oftentimes give pointers to help with whatever you want to work on. The installer is stable for simple installation scenarios, but oftentimes issues can be dug up by playing with edge cases such as manual partitioning, OEM installation, and the like. If you’re already reasonably seasoned as Debian packaging, we would also greatly appreciate help there!
What is Lubuntu?
Lubuntu is an official Ubuntu flavor which uses the Lightweight Qt Desktop Environment (LXQt). The project’s goal is to provide a lightweight yet functional Linux distribution based on a rock-solid Ubuntu base. Lubuntu provides a simple but modern and powerful graphical user interface, and comes with a wide variety of applications so you can browse, email, chat, play, and be productive. You can find the following major applications and toolkits installed by default in this release:
- LXQt 2.2.0
- Qt 6.8.3
- Mozilla Firefox as shipped in the snap package, at the time of release this is version 143.
- LibreOffice 25.8
- VLC 3.0.21
- Featherpad 1.6.2
- Discover Software Center 6.4.5
You can find a variety of other applications installed which aim to enhance your experience while staying out of the way of your normal workflow. New features and bugfixes in core Ubuntu components can be found here.
Lubuntu Manual
The Lubuntu Team has been hard at work in polishing the Lubuntu Manual to make it easy for new and experienced users alike to use their system more productively. The manual can be found at manual.lubuntu.me. We want to thank Lyn Perrine for all the hard work she has put into the Lubuntu Manual. Thank you!
Versions of the Lubuntu Manual:
While the documentation for previous releases will be kept in the Git repository, they will not be published anywhere.
Want an easy way to access the manual? Just double-click the “Lubuntu Manual” icon on the desktop.
Lubuntu Project
How can I help?
We can always use more help! No matter your skill level or your technical experience, there’s something you can help with that can make a huge difference in Lubuntu. Join us on our Matrix chat and talk to us there. Whether you know another language, have some spare time to help us test Lubuntu, are good at writing documentation, or just want to stay “in the know,” that is the place to be. More information about contributing can be found here. If you want to contribute to Lubuntu but do not feel you have the time or skills, consider buying a t-shirt or donating to Lubuntu. Another great method to get involved is bug reporting. If you notice an issue, please file a bug using the instructions on the Lubuntu Wiki. Don’t want to file a bug? Let us know what the problem is (in detail, enough that we can reproduce it) and we can assist you in filing one or do it ourselves.
Contributors
We would like to thank the following contributors for dedicating their time to Lubuntu this cycle. Thank you!
- Walter Lapchynski
- Lyn Perrine
- Dan Simmons
- Chris Guiver
- Thomas Ward
- Rober
- Leó Kolbeinsson
- Rik Mills
- Erich Eickmeyer
- Aaron Rainbolt
- Many more contributors!
We’d also like to thank previous (and hopefully future!) contributors to the Lubuntu project. We wouldn’t be where we are today without you!
We also wanted to give a special mention to Julien Lavergne, our Project Lead Emeritus and Founder. Without you, the Lubuntu project would not exist. Thank you.
Global Team
The Lubuntu Global Team has been created to foster communities in non-English languages and locales. An up-to-date list of our communities can be found on our Links page, but the existing groups include: Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Italian, Chinese, German, Japanese, Arabic, and French. If you would like to start a language group, join our development channel and talk with the Global Team. At minimum, you should have a few interested drivers of the community, and at least one administrator that speaks English.