The Ubuntu 25.10 images geared for the Raspberry Pi will be much more lean than current Ubuntu Linux releases for the Raspberry Pi thanks to changes merged this week.
The Ubuntu desktop images targeting the Raspberry Pi single board computers will be derived from the “desktop-minimal” seed rather than the “full fat” desktop images. This means some applications will not be enabled by default but there is space savings of around 777MB at the moment,
Switching to the Ubuntu desktop-minimal base for the Raspberry Pi images means some applications like GNOME Calendar, Deja Dup, File Roller, GNOME Snapshot, LibreOffice, Rhythmbox, Shotwell, Simple Scan, Thunderbird, Totem, Transmission, and others are no longer installed out-of-the-box. Thus quite some significant savings. Of course, those applications can still be easily installed from the Ubuntu package archive moving forward for those desiring any particular applications. The likes of LibreOffice and Thunderbird may be missed by some desktop users while foregoing Simple Scan, the Transmission BitTorrent client, and others by default is an arguably long overdue move.
The current Ubuntu 25.04 Raspberry Pi image comes in at 2.9GB while the Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS desktop image for Raspberry Pi was at 2.6GB.
Canonical engineer Dave Jones wrote more about this slimming down of the Ubuntu 25.10 Raspberry Pi images via yesterday’s Ubuntu Foundations team notes.
