According to Phoronix, 2025 was a pivotal year for Ubuntu Linux, marked by a rocky transition to Rust-based system tools like sudo-rs and Rust Coreutils ahead of the crucial Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release due in April 2026. The shift in Ubuntu 25.10 caused major breakage for some executables, broke unattended upgrades due to a bug, and uncovered performance shortcomings compared to the traditional GNU versions. On the business side, Canonical generated nearly $300 million in revenue last year with over 1,100 employees, a massive jump from $81 million a decade ago. Technically, the year also saw the introduction of architecture variants like x86_64-v3 packages for better performance, the decision not to apply -O3 optimizations to all packages, and the confirmation that Ubuntu 25.10 would drop GNOME on X.Org support. The company also decided to double down on its investment in OpenJDK Java for the platform.
Rust revolution meets real-world chaos
Here’s the thing about rewriting core system utilities in a memory-safe language: it sounds fantastic in a press release, but the deployment is a nightmare. Canonical’s big bet on Rust for Ubuntu 25.10, with sudo-rs and uutils Coreutils, immediately ran into the wall of reality. We’re talking about security vulnerabilities in sudo-rs, performance regressions, and broken workflows for things like Makeself archives. It’s the classic “second system effect” playing out in public. The goal of a more secure, modern base is absolutely correct, but forcing it into an interim release before an LTS seems… brave. Basically, they’re using 25.10 as a public beta test for 26.04 LTS. For users and sysadmins, it’s a reminder that non-LTS releases are truly for testing. For developers, it’s a massive stress test for these Rust projects. But hey, at least they got “massive” performance gains in Rust Coreutils 0.2 out of it.
Performance puzzles and business booms
While the Rust tools were causing headaches, Canonical was also doing some deep performance soul-searching. They investigated using -O3 compiler optimizations for all packages to boost speed, but ultimately backed off. That’s a fascinating engineering decision. It tells you that the potential for broken code or weird bugs wasn’t worth the marginal gains for most workloads. Instead, they’re offering an x86_64-v3 variant—a smarter, more targeted approach that gives a performance lift to modern hardware without risking stability for older systems. It’s a pragmatic move.
And then there’s the business side. Nearly $300 million in revenue? That’s a serious enterprise. It shows Ubuntu isn’t just a hobbyist distro anymore; it’s a substantial platform with deep roots in servers, cloud, and, increasingly, enterprise desktops. That revenue jump, from $81M to ~$300M in a decade, fuels everything: the Rust experiments, the ARM64 push with “Stubble” for better hardware support, and the work on Snapdragon X Elite laptops. It also makes all that IPO chatter way more credible. A company with those numbers and a global brand is absolutely a candidate for going public.
Shifting sands and strategic bets
Look at the other moves Canonical made. Doubling down on Java investment is a clear signal to the enterprise server market, where Java is still king. Making Multipass fully open-source is a smart play to boost developer adoption across Windows and macOS. And dropping X11 support? That’s just following the upstream GNOME tide, but it’s a final nail in the coffin for a legacy technology. It pushes everyone toward Wayland, for better or worse.
But the ecosystem isn’t all rosy. The report about orphaned Intel packages in Debian/Ubuntu is a quiet alarm bell. When big corporations restructure, open-source maintenance can fall through the cracks. And the call for more developers for Ubuntu Unity is a sad footnote, showing how hard it is to sustain a community flavor without critical mass. So, what’s the big picture? Canonical is aggressively modernizing its stack (Rust, Wayland), chasing new hardware (ARM, Snapdragon), and solidifying its enterprise base (Java, revenue). The 25.10 release is the messy, transitional phase. All eyes are now on whether they can iron out these issues for the stable, long-term foundation of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. The stakes for that release just got a lot higher.
