18 Sep

Lubuntu Questing Beta Released!

Thanks to all the hard work from our contributors, Lubuntu 25.10 Beta has been released. With the codename Questing Quokka, Lubuntu 25.10 will be the 29th release of Lubuntu, the fifteenth release of Lubuntu with LXQt as the default desktop environment.

Support lifespan

With 25.10 being an interim release, it will follow the standard non-LTS support period of nine months, which means 25.10 will be supported until July 2026. Please note that 25.10 is still in Beta, and is not officially supported until its scheduled release on October 9, 2025.

You can download 25.10 Beta here. If you would like to upgrade your existing 24.04 LTS or 25.04 installation, please visit our manual page describing the process. Common Ubuntu instructions can be found here.

Known Issues and Notable Changes

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

  • apt sometimes has odd behavior when resolving packages, choosing packages that one wouldn’t expect if presented with multiple choices that can satisfy a dependency. This has not been filed as a bug in Ubuntu, but has been filed as a bug in Debian. See the bug report here. Consider double-checking the list of packages that will be installed when installing new software. This behavior has resulted in two bugs in Lubuntu:
    • KWallet and KWalletManager are being installed by default instead of gnome-keyring: Bug link
    • Alacritty is being installed alongside QTerminal: Bug link
  • Some disk management packages (cryptsetup and btrfs-tools, possibly others) are no longer being preinstalled, causing KDE Partition Manager to complain in some instances.
  • Installing with manual partitioning on BIOS systems may result in an unbootable system. To prevent this, after setting up your desired partition layout, change the bootloader installation location to something other than its default value, then change it back. This will get Calamares to remember what disk it should install the bootloader to.
  • On OEM installations of Lubuntu, double-clicking the “Finish OEM preparation” icon will do nothing. This is because kdialog is not being pre-installed on accident. You may be able to work around this by running sudo apt install kdialog in the OEM session before double-clicking the icon.

Common Release Notes

Please also check the Ubuntu Release Notes for more common issues and bugs affecting all Ubuntu flavors.

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:

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!

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.