The second monthly snapshot of Ubuntu 25.10, code-named "Questing Quokka," is now available for download as part of its ongoing development process. This build is a precursor to the official release on October 9, 2025. Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, recently announced plans to enhance its development process by increasing automation and reproducibility in build testing, which aims to generate new operating system images more swiftly.
These changes are designed to alleviate the workload on community volunteers, allowing them to focus more on meaningful contributions rather than repetitive checks. Early detection of major issues during the initial development stages is also expected as a result of these adaptations, rather than only uncovering them during later beta testing phases.
However, despite these innovations, the current snapshots are not intended for production use; they serve primarily as testing tools for developers to refine the backend processes necessary for creating stable builds. As such, Canonical advises users that these snapshots should be viewed as temporary builds, emphasizing that they are not to be considered stable releases.
Ubuntu 25.10 Snapshot 2 can be downloaded from the Ubuntu CD image server, where users can find both the standard GNOME version and all official flavors. While this snapshot introduces some backend changes, like implementing Chrony with NTS and a Rust-based version of sudo, users should note that these are primarily low-level updates rather than visible changes to the user interface.
The next snapshot release, Snapshot 3, is scheduled for July 31, 2025. Users testing this snapshot will be able to receive updates without needing a fresh installation of the subsequent versions. The final stable version will be released in October 2025.