The MATE edition turns ten with the launch of Ubuntu MATE 25.04I have to say it was my primary operating system for years, as I never got used to Unity and had to look for alternatives. If I recall correctly, when I started using it, it was still a "remix" and gave me a lot of joy. I stopped using it, it must be said, because my previous laptop experienced glitches that I never knew how to fix without doing a lot of research.
But, as we read in the notes from this release, is one of the most notable pieces of news about this new iteration of the "classic" Ubuntu flavor with a graphical environment. The information provided in the official release isn't very extensive either, and doesn't go beyond a sentence mentioning new features such as the inclusion of Firefox 137, Evolution 3.56, and LibreOffice 25.2.2. 6.15. It's striking that it mentions using Linux 6.14, currently in development, and I had to test it in a virtual machine to verify whether this was true or not; it uses Linux XNUMX... unless something changes in the next few days, but I think Martin made a mistake there.
Other new features in Ubuntu MATE 25.04
Little more can be confirmed without a more extensive note, but we can say that, in addition to MATE 1.26.1, share the following with the rest of the Plucky Puffin family:
- Launch of normal, provisional or cycle interim, which means it will be supported for 9 months, until January 2026.
- Updated base packages:
- systemd 257.4.
- Table 25.0.x.
- PipeWire 1.2.7.
- Blue Z 5.79.
- Gstreamer 1.26.
- Power Profiles Daemon 0.30.
- Open SSL 3.4.1.
- GnuTLS 3.8.9.
- Python 3.13.2.
- GCC 14.2.
- glib 2.41.
- binutils 2.44.
- Java 24 GA.
- Go 1.24.
- Rust 1.84.
- LLVM 20.
- .Net 9.
- Libre Office 25.2.2.
- Improvements to AppArmour.
- Improvements to the installer (uses the same one as the official version). Among other things, it makes it easier to create dual-boot installations.
Ubuntu MATE 25.04 is now available for download from the button below. For Raspberry Pi users, please note that these are only released in LTS versions, and not always.