As I often say, the important steps, the ones that make it clear that a new version of Ubuntu is coming, begin with revealing the wallpaper. That moment has already taken place, and Canonical has revealed the image that will appear on the desktop after the fresh install of Ubuntu 25.04. The codename is also well known: Plucky Puffin. No surprise there. Or almost.
For so long now that I can't even remember when the trend started, the wallpaper has purple tones with the logo in the centerWhat might be a little surprising is that they seem to have gone a bit overboard with the shadows on the top right edge. As is almost always the case, there's a raised area, like a couple of triangular areas, and on that edge... one can only say that it stands out, and not in a very good way. But that's just an opinion.
Ubuntu 25.04 Wallpaper
In addition to the purple version, there is also a dark, a medium, and a light version, the ones below these lines.
For those interested, the four backgrounds are available in the Ubuntu publication, specifically in this link. Images are sized at 1920x1080 if you know how to use the developer tools, or up to 4K if you get them from the link provided on Google Drive.
Ubuntu 25.04 will arrive next April, with GNOME 48 and probably Linux 5.14. Among other new features, it will use a new image viewer, a Papers which is a fork from Evince, whose development is moving along more rapidly, and at some point they will offer GIMP 3.0 in the official repositories. Additionally, they are also expected to update the base packages, which include, for example, Python, Mesa, and new versions of the desktops for the different official Plucky Puffin flavors.