Ubuntu 25.04: What Developers Need to Know

Ubuntu 25.04 Plucky Puffin is a standard (non-LTS) release with 9 months of support. It brings kernel 6.14, GNOME 48, and the latest development toolchains. For developers who want the newest packages without running Fedora, this is your distro.

Key Changes

• Kernel 6.14 with improved hardware support and io_uring enhancements
• GNOME 48 with performance improvements and new notification system
• Snap improvements — faster startup times and reduced disk usage
• APT 3.0 with improved dependency resolution
• Python 3.13 as default
• GCC 14 and LLVM 19
• Improved WSL2 integration for Windows developers

For Cloud and Kubernetes

Ubuntu remains the most popular Linux distribution on public clouds. The 25.04 cloud images include:

# Launch on AWS
aws ec2 run-instances \
  --image-id ami-xxxx \  # Ubuntu 25.04 AMI
  --instance-type g5.xlarge

# Or use the official cloud image
wget https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/plucky/current/plucky-server-cloudimg-amd64.img

For Kubernetes deployments, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS remains the recommended choice. Use 25.04 for development and testing.

Snap vs APT Debate

Ubuntu 25.04 continues the gradual shift toward Snap packages. Firefox, Thunderbird, and other desktop apps are Snap-only. Server users can still use traditional packages for most things:

# Traditional APT installation
sudo apt install nginx

# Snap alternative
sudo snap install nginx

Development Environment

# Install development essentials
sudo apt install build-essential git python3-dev nodejs npm

# Docker (still via APT, not Snap)
sudo apt install docker.io docker-compose-v2

# Or Podman
sudo apt install podman

Automating with Ansible

Ansible supports Ubuntu through the apt module:

---
- name: Configure Ubuntu 25.04
  hosts: ubuntu
  tasks:
    - name: Update and upgrade
      ansible.builtin.apt:
        upgrade: dist
        update_cache: true

    - name: Install development tools
      ansible.builtin.apt:
        name:
          - build-essential
          - python3-dev
          - golang
        state: present

Final Thoughts

Ubuntu 25.04 is for developers who want the latest packages with Ubuntu’s ecosystem. For production servers and Kubernetes nodes, stick with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. For AI workloads, consider RHEL AI which includes InstructLab and vLLM out of the box.

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