It’s been about 6 months since our last minor release and the team has been busy! For all of the details about what’s new since OS 8.0.1, make sure to check out our posts from May until now. In this post I’ll just be covering our progress over the last month up until the release of OS 8.0.2. OS 8.1 is due to be released before year end and that post will be The Big One™ that wraps up every change since OS 8.0. So without further delay, let’s dive into what we did last month that made it in OS 8.0.2!

Installer & Initial Setup

The latest Installer incorporates fixes for a number of issues raised during accessibility testing. The “Before Installing”, “Try or Install”, “Choose a Disk”, and “Encryption” views should all have much improved accessible labels, things like password quality feedback will now be read aloud by the screen reader, and we fixed a couple instances where the screen reader would announce text style markup. Plus, Leo added a few more safety checks for the custom install view that should prevent crashes with certain complex partition layouts, and the Installer should now always appear centered on screen.

Initial Setup also includes the same password quality feedback improvements for screen readers and it will always appear centered on screen. Plus trailing hyphens and underscores are now allowed in usernames and we use a more reliable source of information for keyboard layouts, thanks to Ryo.

Music

The latest release of Music includes a number of important new features for managing the queue, including performance improvements for large queues. You can now remove individual track from a track’s context menu or clear the entire queue thanks to Oowoosh0. Jeremy and Leonhard implemented searching by track name. The queue and the last played track will be saved and restored thanks to Stella, and she added the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+O to add new files. Ryan added the Ctrl+Q shortcut to quit, and album art will now show in media controls in the panel and elsewhere. Plus Oowoosh0 fixed a couple of issues with long artists names or when using large system fonts.

Terminal

Leo Fixed an issue that caused keyboard focus to not be inside the first tab when opening a new window, and he fixed an issue where dropping in text that contain # would be cut off. Jeremy also fixed an issue with incorrect line breaks when pasting or dropping text while a process is running, made sure to always clear process finished icons when a tab is selected, and removed an old misfeature that would cause window sizes to be odd on certain display sizes.

Hardware Enablement

OS 8.0.2 includes the latest long-term support Hardware Enablement stack from Ubuntu, including Linux 6.14. This new version of the Linux kernel brings improved performance—especially while gaming, reduced power consumption for certain AMD and Intel chipsets and GPUs, new security features, and support for more gamepads, wifi devices, microphones, and more.

And More

Main menus are now properly marked in Camera, and Videos and can be opened with the keyboard shortcut F10. In Calculator, Alain replaced the “Del” button with an icon, and the “New Window” action now shows in icon in places like keyboard shortcut settings. Trevor fixed a crash with screenshots which are much taller than they are wide and Ryo fixed an issue that caused screenshots not to be saved to custom locations.

Get elementary OS 8.0.2

elementary OS 8.0.2 is available as a pay-what-you-can purchase at elementary.io today. Localized direct downloads and a torrent magnet link are provided.

Sponsors have been able to download OS 8.0.2 release candidates since the beginning of the month, so if getting things before anyone else is important to you, consider sponsoring us on GitHub

And Even More

Expect another blog post soon detailing all of the new features that have been released since OS 8.0.2 was built and what’s available to test in Early Access—there are a number of big ones!

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The Ubuntu Release team is pleased to announce the Beta release of the Ubuntu 25.10 Desktop, Server, WSL, and Cloud products.

Ubuntu 25.10, codenamed Questing Quokka, continues Ubuntu’s proud traditionof integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into ahigh-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard atwork through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs.

This Beta release includes images from not only the Ubuntu Desktop,Server, WSL, and Cloud products, but also the Edubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu,Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Cinnamon, UbuntuKylin, Ubuntu Studio, Ubuntu Unity,and Xubuntu flavours.

The Beta images are known to be reasonably free of showstopper image build or installer bugs, while representing a very recent snapshot of 25.10 that should be representative of the features intended to ship with the final release expected on October 09, 2025.

Ubuntu, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu WSL, Cloud Images:

Questing Beta includes updated versions of most of our core set of packages, including a current 6.17 (rc) kernel, and much more.

To upgrade to Ubuntu 25.10 Beta from Ubuntu 25.04, follow these instructions:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/QuestingUpgrades

The Ubuntu 25.10 Beta images can be downloaded at:

https://releases.ubuntu.com/25.10/ (Ubuntu and Ubuntu Server on x86)

This Ubuntu Server image features the next generation Subiquity server installer, bringing the comfortable live session and speedy install of the Ubuntu Desktop to server users.

Additional images can be found at the following links:

https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/daily/server/questing/current/ (Cloud Images)
https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/25.10/beta/ (Non-x86)

As fixes will be included in new images between now and release, any daily cloud image from today or later (i.e. a serial of 20250903 or higher) should be considered a Beta image. Bugs found should be filed against the appropriate packages or, failing that, the cloud-images project in Launchpad.

The full release notes for Ubuntu 25.10 Beta can be found at:

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/questing-quokka-release-notes/59220

Kubuntu:

Kubuntu is the KDE based flavour of Ubuntu. It uses the Plasma desktop and includes a wide selection of tools from the KDE project.

The Beta images can be downloaded at:

https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/25.10/beta/

Lubuntu:

Lubuntu is a flavor of Ubuntu 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.

The Beta images can be downloaded at:

https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/releases/25.10/beta/

Ubuntu Budgie:

Ubuntu Budgie is community developed desktop, integrating Budgie Desktop Environment with Ubuntu at its core.

The Beta images can be downloaded at:

https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-budgie/releases/25.10/beta/

UbuntuKylin:

UbuntuKylin is a flavor of Ubuntu that is more suitable for Chinese users.

The Beta images can be downloaded at:

https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntukylin/releases/25.10/beta/

Ubuntu Studio:

Ubuntu Studio is a flavor of Ubuntu that provides a full range of multimedia content creation applications for each key workflow: audio, graphics, video, photography and publishing.

The Beta images can be downloaded at:

https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/25.10/beta/

Ubuntu Unity:

Ubuntu Unity is a flavor of Ubuntu featuring the Unity7 desktop environment.

The Beta images can be downloaded at:

https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-unity/releases/25.10/beta/

Xubuntu:

Xubuntu is a flavor of Ubuntu that comes with Xfce, which is a stable, light and configurable desktop environment.

The Beta images can be downloaded at:

https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/25.10/beta/

Regular daily images for Ubuntu, and all flavours, can be found at:

https://cdimage.ubuntu.com

Ubuntu is a full-featured Linux distribution for clients, servers and clouds, with a fast and easy installation and regular releases. A tightly-integrated selection of excellent applications is included, and an incredible variety of add-on software is just a few clicks away.

Professional technical support is available from Canonical Limited and hundreds of other companies around the world. For more information about support, visit https://ubuntu.com/support

If you would like to help shape Ubuntu, take a look at the list of ways you can participate at:
https://ubuntu.com/community/participate

Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions really help us to improve this and future releases of Ubuntu. Instructions can be found at:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

You can find out more about Ubuntu and about this Beta release on our website, Matrix channel and Discourse.

To sign up for future Ubuntu announcements, please subscribe to Ubuntu’s very low volume announcement list at:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-announce

Originally posted to the ubuntu-announce mailing list Thu Sep 18 21:36:39 UTC 2025 by Utkarsh Gupta on behalf of the Ubuntu Release Team

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Your monthly updates post is here! This month we have a couple of releases for our developer tools, plus plenty of improvements to Bluetooth, as well as a hardware enablement boost from Ubuntu and plenty to talk about in Early Access. Let’s dive in!

System Settings

The previously mentioned redesign of Bluetooth Settings has arrived! This redesign not only brings a bit more visual separation between paired devices and nearby devices, but also improves the keyboard navigation and screen reader experience. Plus, you can now double click rows to activate them. We resolved an issue where sometimes devices would be duplicated in the list and fixed issues when a pairing request requires entering passcodes—like with some keyboards. You’ll now also see fewer unnamed devices when discovering, enabling and disabling Bluetooth on devices that have been hardware locked should now work reliably, and to top it all off performance when listing lots of devices has also been improved.

Leonhard and Ryo fixed a couple of issues with sidebar selections when navigating directly to a setting from search. Ryo fixed an issue where Sharing Settings lost its window controls when a network was not connected. And there’s now an action to jump directly to the System Updates page from the context menu in the Dock or Applications Menu or via search.

Code

Working with Git projects continues to get better thanks to Jeremy! There’s now a new feature to clone git repositories directly from inside Code via the projects menu in the sidebar. The item for opening project folders has moved there as well, so managing your open projects now happens all in one place no matter where they come from.

He also fixed an issue with blank tooltips appearing in empty sidebar folders, a crash when deleting selected text while using the “Highlight Selection” plugin, and a freeze when editing lists with the “Markdown” plugin. Plus, the Symbols sidebar now shows a loading spinner when searching symbols takes longer than usual, and filters have been fixed for C symbols.

Terminal

Terminal will now warn about pasted commands that include options to skip confirmation like -y, --interactive=never, and --force. Plus we now make sure to show all found warnings about a pasted command, not just the first one found. For example, if a command like sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y fuse is pasted, we will warn about use of admin privileges, multiple commands, and that it skips confirmations, not just that it uses admin privileges.

Corentin fixed an issue where long commands could resize windows. Jeremy fixed an issue where tab labels didn’t properly update when using screen or ssh. And he made sure we properly close tabs when using the exit command.

And More

A few small bug fixes for our Window Manager: Corentin resolved a potential crasher, Leo improved dock hide animations, and Leonhard fixed an issue with revealing the panel over fullscreen apps.

A new Hardware Enablement stack has arrived thanks to Ubuntu! This includes Linux 6.14 and Mesa 25 which brings support for newer hardware as well as some big performance gains and potential battery life improvements. OMG! Ubuntu! breaks down all the nerdy details here

Get These Updates

As always, pop open System Settings → System on elementary OS 8 and hit “Update All” to get these updates plus your regular security, bug fix, and translation updates. Or set up automatic updates and get a notification when updates are ready to install!

Early Access

Maps

Last month, Ryo made the last release of Atlas on AppCenter because we’ll soon be shipping it by default in elementary OS as Maps! As part of our work to improve the experience on computers you take with you—like notebooks and tablets—we’ve been working on features that use your location, and shipping a Maps app is part of that work.

Our hope with Maps is to improve support for mapping and location features in our platform libraries and to improve experiences in other apps like Tasks and Calendar as well as 3rd party apps in AppCenter. We’ve also already made a tiny improvement to the wider Freedesktop ecosystem by documenting a standard location icon used across desktops and in Portals. We’re really looking forward to getting your feedback and learning how we can improve experiences for apps that use your location in elementary OS.

Window Manager & Dock

First up is some new eye candy. We’ve heard requests for transparency and blur over the years and I’m happy to report we’re now experimenting with some new effects in shell elements like the alt + tab Window Switcher. We want to make sure to carefully balance shiny effects with performance and legibility, so be sure to send in your feedback. We’re also on track to apply some blur behind the Dock soon, so watch out for that.

Speaking of the Dock, you may have noticed that it’s now sticking around when in Multitasking View! We’ve replaced the old workspace switcher and you can now launch apps from the Dock directly into different workspaces to quickly get things set up exactly how you like. We’ve also merged in a new feature to monitor background apps that use the cross-platform Background Portal. Here you can not only manage background apps, but also see an explanation of what exactly they’re doing while running. With these features, we’re seeing years of design and development work come together: an improved way to multitask on elementary OS whether you use a mouse at your desktop, multitouch gestures on your laptop or tablet, or rely on keyboard shortcuts to get the job done. I’m extremely proud of what the team has done here and look forward from hearing more from you about it!

And that’s not all. Building on the previously mentioned Gesture Controller, the new Touchpad backend for multitouch gestures has also landed. This replaces Touchégg in the Secure Session as the way to track multitouch gestures, fixes bugs, and enables new features like two-dimensional swiping between workspaces and the full Multitasking View. So if you are a fan of gestures on your notebook, we’d love for you to try it out and report back before we ship it for everyone.

Hardware Support

Last but not least, we’re now building Universal EFI install images for ARM64 processors. This means instead of building unique ARM images for every hardware platform, we can build a single universal image for platforms like Pinebook, Raspberry Pi, and M-series Macs. These builds are still experimental and come with a few bugs, but we’d love folks to give them a spin in a virtual machine or on a spare computer and report back. If everything looks good, we may be able to offer stable ARM64 downloads starting with OS 8.1 later this year.

Sponsors

I want to give special thanks this month to Ryan Prior for his extremely generous one-time sponsorship! Ryan noted that this sponsorship was dedicated to the hard work of Renato who has been translating elementary OS into Brazilian Portuguese. Thanks a ton for your work Renato!

At the moment we’re at 22% of our monthly funding goal and 332 Sponsors on GitHub! Shoutouts to everyone helping us reach our goals here. Your monthly sponsorship funds development and makes sure we have the resources we need to give you the best version of elementary OS we can!

Monthly release candidate builds and daily Early Access builds are available to GitHub Sponsors from any tier! Beware that Early Access builds are not considered stable and you will encounter fresh issues when you run them. We’d really appreciate reporting any problems you encounter with the Feedback app or directly on GitHub.