The Ubuntu Release team is pleased to announce the Beta release of the Ubuntu 25.10 Desktop, Server, WSL, and Cloud products.
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.
Have you noted what is missing? and the possible consequence?
āHave you noted what is missing? ā => Ubuntu MATE 
There is also this note posted on the Ubuntu forum:
which recorded that only the Desktop, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Studio and Cinnamon Flavours had either offered input or participated.
Without putting too fine a point on it, does the UbuntuMATE Community have a legitimate concern regarding the future/continuity of our preferred Desktop Environment, given that the Development Team for UbuntuMATE did not "feed" upstream by the communicated deadlines?
Or, is the UbuntuMATE Team making a conscious choice to forgo efforts for this release in order to dedicate themselves to completing the Wayland transformation and smoothing that out for a splash with UbuntuMATE 26.04?
From my own perspective, I would personally strongly endorse the latter ... but it would be nice to give the Community a "heads up" regarding approach/strategy/timelines for expected delivery of various feature sets.
I would also like to point out this other posting
which makes reference to
( I really like the way they implemented the page for Xubuntu! )
What I find most worrisome, and I don't know of any other word for it, is that there is no mention of UbuntuMATE for any of those contact mailing lists!!!
Is that an unfortunate, but serious, oversight?
Or ... should I start wearing my "paranoid" hat and putting out there that some nameless person/group is responsible for deliberately "suppressing" the distribution of awareness that there actually exists an UbuntuMATE Organization and Community out there?
Or ... is this a sign that our Community doesn't fit well within the framework of how the other Ubuntu communities "mesh" together? Is the UbuntuMATE Community a "misfit" ... or am I just reading too much into all this?
I donāt see it that way, or where youāre getting that detail from.
Those flavors are specifically mentioned as items made it into the Notes have items that were actually discussed for inclusion and remembering. I suspect Edubuntu was mentioned (Amy may have been there; alas I canāt recall who I saw in the meeting I attended as it was awhile ago now) even if Edubuntu was only mentioned briefly, and I do recall Xubuntu was specifically covered (passing on the apology that Sean being key in that). To me apologies in advance qualify as participation, even if they donāt make it into the notes (theyāre notes & not minutes for a reason!)
What I just said may not impact your point (being specific to Ubuntu MATE), but many flavors were talked about including Ubuntu MATE (I mentioned that here on this site), alas without Ubuntu MATE representation, it was of more generic nature as all flavors continue to work towards 26.04 (which was the purpose of the part of the meeting Iām referring to).
The beta release was a mandatory release for all flavors, Ubuntu MATE did not achieve that for 25.10 and missed out. Thus the final release of Ubuntu MATE 25.10 is now no longer certain, though its still possible for that to occur. The lack of an official 25.10 release may also impact the next official LTS (26.04) release; but Iād have to check requirements on that (those requirements are being revised now in fact, and still in review), but Iām only an observer in those processes.
I didnāt address all of what you put, Iāll continue here
That was done on specific request from Xubuntu team members. Most other flavor teams have accepted the defaults & not requested changes. Either way I see it as moot now anyway, given itās being withdrawn rather soon. I sure wouldnāt worry about anything mailing list related.
I sure do NOT see it that way.
Iām australian, which puts me in a rather different timezone to most other folks, so when I enter into certain rooms & try and catch up on what happened whilst I slept, its often quite a lot of discussion. Today catching up on stuff included your profile picture in one of those rooms (which I recognized; and Iām not talking about here on Ubuntu MATE discourse) , and discussion on how to deal with a rather good (alas somewhat inconvenient) suggestion from you which resulted in some changes you may (or may not) have noticed. Many people see what is said on sites like this (and all Ubuntu infrastructure in fact; though this isnāt a Ubuntu site) which can lead to discussions, and decisions that not everyone is aware of or notices as effect.
This site is viewed positively by the wider Ubuntu community; with some minor differences noted. This site allows discussion of EOL releases etc, and non-Ubuntu distros where users are using the MATE desktop; a result of this sites MATE association and some funding (that isnāt related to Ubuntu).
The Ubuntu-MATE portion of this site has been discussed (a number of times) in regard moving to Ubuntu Discourse, with mods here being made mods there etcā¦ I hear mention of that due to my own memberships/roles (including name(s) of Ubuntu MATE team members whoāve provided input), but I donāt see any [public/even moderator only] mention of it here on this site. Maybe youāre sensing some of this, which led to your mention of paranoid hat, I donāt know; but I will give my own opinion that the Ubuntu MATE community is seen as part of the wider Ubuntu community.
Myself, I see the Ubuntu MATE users as keen, energetic, but the Ubuntu MATE flavor is lacking contributors, especially developers. Much of the energy that was here (Ubuntu-MATE), has āmoved onā to other interests; that happens to almost everyone.
[ If not obvious; Iām expressing only my own views, and there will be alot that I donāt see & thus havenāt included in my views Iām expressing here ]
Hi, @guiverc
You wrote:
I guess I have two questions about that:
1 - Do you think / know if this could also impact people that want to install the "MATE Desktop Environment" in "regular" Ubuntu 25.10 ("Questing Quokka") ?
2 - I found the following Bug reported in Launchpad (āBug #2125119 āUnable to finish installation and restart Ubuntu MATEā : Bugs : subiquityā - https://bugs.launchpad.net/subiquity/+bug/2125119):
I see that there's already one merge request, in that same Bug report web page, to fix that Bug:
"(...)
Related branches
~ogayot/ubuntu-seeds:questing [ https://code.launchpad.net/~ogayot/ubuntu-seeds/+git/ubuntu-seeds/+ref/questing ]
Ready for review [ https://code.launchpad.net/~ogayot/ubuntu-seeds/+git/ubuntu-seeds/+merge/492820 ] for merging into ~ubuntu-mate-dev/ubuntu-seeds/+git/ubuntu-mate:questing [ https://code.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mate-dev/ubuntu-seeds/+git/ubuntu-mate/+ref/questing ]
Ubuntu MATE Developers https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mate-dev [ https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mate-dev ]: Pending requested 2025-09-18
Diff: 12 lines (+1/-1)
1 file modified
live (+1/-1)
(...)"
I also see that the " 'Ubuntu MATE Developers' team in Launchpad" - https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mate-dev - has 94 active members - https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mate-dev/+members#active - but only 2 Administrators: @Wimpy (Martin Wimpress) and @popey (Alan Pope).
Do you (or anybody that may know) happen to know if only those 2 Administrators (@wimpy and @popey) have the required privileges to accept and merge that "Merge Request" -OR- if other active members may also have those privileges? I see, for instance, that @lah7 and @franksmcb and @vkareh are "active members" in that list, but are not "Administrators". Do you think that accepting and merging that merge request could be enough to make "Ubuntu MATE 25.10 Beta" and/or the final version of "Ubuntu MATE 25.10 ("Questing Quokka")" again a possibility?
Thanks in advance!
No it will not.
On my own installs using [Ubuntu] MATE, Iām commonly adding the ubuntu-mate-desktop to an existing install, as most of my installs are multi-desktop installs. There may not be an ISO to download and install Ubuntu-MATE 25.10, but it wonāt impact any who add packages, or release-upgrade to 25.10 should no ISO be officially released.
The bug you mention will be fixed Iām expecting, it was a shame it was discovered so late. Iāll have no more knowledge about the bug fix than you do though I suspect.
In regards the management of Ubuntu-MATE on launchpad Iām also likely to have no more knowledge than you. Alan is still active on Ubuntu Discourse, even if not around anywhere near as actively as he was in the past. Iām aware that Martin has spoken to various people, but I was not part of those conversations & any knowledge I have is 2nd hand at best and was limited in that it was mostly peripheral to the actual topic being discussed.
Ubuntu-MATE 25.10 may still be officially released as with ISO, my point was more that is no longer the default status, but there is still time.
Ubuntu MATE 25.10 may still be released as an official ISO.
Iāve seen no talk about removing Ubuntu MATE as a flavor, only vague general discussions around flavors lacking contributors & struggling (and this wasnāt limited to a single flavor either!), where that was mainly geared at creating better documentation/procedures in that area.
Responding since I got beamed here. I'm "active" in the sense that I'm still in the list, but I'm not part of any of the discussions surrounding Ubuntu MATE releases. In fact I don't even use Ubuntu MATE - I just really like this community, so I participate from time to time.
I find the anxiety about the status of Ubuntu MATE has really dimished my interest in this community. Its a bummer that we've gone from hopeful and excited, to uncertain and worried.
To be clear; I dont blame the community nor the developers. Its totally their prerogative to work on other projects - and i'd love to know what excites them and where I might look in future for Linux desktops. After all, if they delivered Ubuntu MATE - surely they're working on something just as cool now!
Unfortunately you are not alone. As more and more things break on me Iāve begun to start looking toward the shores of OSX off in the distance as a possible compromise for the future. Itās not Mate but itās also not Windows. And hopefully there will be compensations such as Apple only applications and commercial programs currently not available to me.
Itās a shame itās come to this.
I'm still developing MATE, I just use Fedora instead. Mind you, I'm also not part of the Fedora team, nor the Fedora MATE release team or anything - I literally just do upstream MATE.
There are some changes coming up. One of the developers is putting in a lot of effort into getting MATE working on Wayland. Works surprisingly well in my tests (although I'm still using X11 myself).
For my part I've been doing a few upgrades to make sure we use some of the good parts of GTK3 and remove deprecations. I'm also working on a huge backlog of wishlist items I've had looming for years: evolution integration in the calendar applet, dynamic workspaces, a notifications history panel, DBus integration with the panel, etc, etc.
There are a handful of other developers doing necessary maintenance stuff, like fixing old bugs here and there...
Thank you very much, Victor, for offering that insider view of the maintenance/evolutionary happenings related specificallly to MATE.
The ferns were turning into mushrooms from lack of light (visibility) from up on high, with some of us withering and dying!
It would be nice if there were more MATE-specific insider "quick-snips", from all the UbuntuMATE developers, to nourish the spirit of the "faithful" and enable the "flock" to flourish!
Ubuntu 25.10 Released, and that includes Ubuntu MATE 25.10
Ubuntu 25.10, codenamed "Questing Quokka", is here. This release continues Ubuntu's proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open-source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at work through this cycle, partnering with the community and our partners, to introduce new features and fix bugs.
..
The newest Edubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Cinnamon, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Studio, and Xubuntu are also being released today. More details can be found for these at their individual release notes under the Official Flavours section: ...
FYI: You may note one flavor isn't mentioned; you'll find reference to that here.
Hi, @guiverc
You wrote:
That's GREAT news! Thank you very much for sharing
You also wrote:
Hmmm... I'm assuming you meant to write "one flavor" instead of "on flavor" and that flavor / flavour would be "Ubuntu Unity" because, in the web page that you linked to - "Questing Quokka (25.10) Release Status Tracking - Release - Ubuntu Community Hub"- https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/questing-quokka-25-10-release-status-tracking/68886 - I've found the following reference:
"(...) All ISO testing have been completed in the last 24 hours and Unity decided to not release their flavor because they were not going to be ready.(...)"
Am I right?
Yeah, I meant "one" .. and didn't notice the typo/mistake sorry.
Yep Ubuntu Unity 25.10 hasn't released (some discussions can be seen on matrix)
Iām using Sparky Mate too on a second laptop and things are okay there with the exception of the battery applet which tends to crash or not load at all on startup.
Dynamic workspaces and evolution integration sounds really great