The third monthly snapshot of Ubuntu 25.10 (Questing Quokka) is available to download, if you feel like joining the furry-faced mascot on as it seeks out stable status.
Ubuntu’s new monthly snapshot releases are images produced by a new automated build and testing process Canonical’s engineers are working on. The aim is to to create a pipeline that needs ‘little to no human intervention’ and creates ISOs faster and more reliably.
These monthly snapshots are not in any sense ‘stable’ or ‘production ready’. They are not alpha or beta builds, and no more reliable than a daily build. For the avoidance of doubt, they’re not rolling releases, either.
Canonical developer Utkarsh Gupta frames it on Ubuntu Devel mailing list “…these aren’t production ready and should be seen as “throwaway artifacts” for now”.
In a sense, Ubuntu monthly snapshots are as much about letting distro’s engineer stress-test, assess and continually address issues in their new automated image building process as much as they about making snapshots for testing.
Not that real world feedback on those builds isn’t important, of course.
Beyond the way in which Ubuntu monthly snapshots are built, the distro on the ISO has no differences to the that in the daily builds.
Download Ubuntu Snapshot 3
To download Ubuntu 25.10 Snapshots head over to the official Ubuntu CD image server to get a bootable, installable snapshot of Ubuntu, though snapshots for all of Ubuntu’s official flavours are available at their respective cdimage URLs.
Ubuntu 25.10 is still under heavy development, and many changes and upgrades are either yet to land or in the process of landing. If you download a snapshot to sample, don’t expect many obvious changes, though GNOME 49 alpha is present, though the new default apps aren’t.
There is a low-level stuff to appreciate, including Chrony with NTS, a Rust-based sudo on the way and—grab a pitchfork!!11—no X11/xorg session option any more.
Ubuntu 25.10 Snapshot 4 will be released on August 28 2025. If you install this snapshot just install software updates as they arrive to stay up to date (meaning no; you don’t have to reinstall with Snapshot 4 to get that version).
The final stable release of Ubuntu 25.10 is on course for release Thursday, October 9 2025.