Back in May the Ubuntu engineers at Canonical announced plans to ship Ubuntu 25.10 with Linux 6.17 given their recent commitment to always shipping with the latest upstream Linux kernel version. They still are committing to it even if it means the kernel and Ubuntu schedules don’t perfectly align and Ubuntu 25.10 out-of-the-box may end up being on an unstable “-rc” kernel.
Brett Grandbois on the behalf of the Canonical Kernel Team announced today they anticipate Linux 6.17 in Ubuntu 25.10 being an “unstable kernel” at release time. Now that the Linux 6.17 cycle is underway they have a better idea on timing and are anticipating Linux 6.17 be ready for its stable release on 28 September. But the Ubuntu 25.10 kernel freeze is on 25 September. So they’ll likely end up shipping Ubuntu 25.10 at release-time an unstable, near-final version of Linux 6.17:
“With the recent release of Linux 6.16 we now have a much clearer idea of when 6.17 is likely to be released, as of this writing being tentatively Sept 28, 2025. The current 25.10 release schedule has Kernel Freeze set at Sept 25, which means that there is a strong possibility that Linux 6.17 will still be in a final -rc state at the time the kernel needs to be frozen for the 25.10 Final Release. Therefore, the CKT are announcing that Ubuntu 25.10 will potentially be an Unstable Release from the perspective of the kernel and will be henceforth working with that assumption until such time as conditions warrant a change.”
They announced today on Ubuntu Discourse.
By the time of the kernel freeze, Linux 6.17 should be in very good shape even though still carrying an “-rc” tag should be very much in a near-final state barring any last minute issues that would hold up the release by an additional week. It’s great seeing Linux 6.17 being their focus though given all the great changes in tow from Intel Xe3 graphics by default for Panther Lake to a lot of other new hardware enablement and optimizations. A stable/non-RC Linux 6.17 kernel can then be shipped down after the Ubuntu 25.10 release as a stable release update.
