Lubuntu 25.10 Questing Quokka beta arrives with controversial Rust-based core changes

Lubuntu has released the beta version of Lubuntu 25.10, codenamed Questing Quokka, which will be the 29th release overall and the 15th with the LXQt desktop (LXDE was used before). While still a big update, it is an interim release between long term versions and has a shorter lifespan. It will be supported for nine months with the end of life occurring in July 2026.

The beta is expected to run for several weeks until October 9 and includes significant, potentially disruptive changes, such as the adoption of Rust-based core utilities. As a beta, things might be unstable so it shouldn’t be used on production machines.

As Ubuntu is now using the uutil Rust implementation of coreutils to replace the GNU version, this upcoming version of Lubuntu does too. The goal is to provide better memory safety and more robust code, however, Lubuntu says this isn’t without risk and warns that users could see core utilities behave differently. The findutils and diffutils are explicitly noted as not yet having been replaced with their Rust equivalents.

A second key package, sudo, has also been replaced with a Rust rewrite called sudo-rs. Unlike rust-coreutils, sudo-rs is not a fully drop-in replacement for the original sudo. The new version omits features that are largely unused or legacy. A specific breaking change is the -E option, which passes the current environment to the executed application, but is ignored by sudo-rs , which can cause scripts or applications to misbehave.

There are also some known issues in this update, for example, apt can exhibit odd behavior when resolving packages leading to unexpected dependencies like KWallet and Alactritty being installed by default. Some disk management packages like cryptsetup and btrfs-tools are no longer pre-installed either.

The notes also say that manual partitioning on BIOS systems may result in an unbootable system unless a specific workaround is performed. Finally, the Finish OEM preparation icon on OEM installs does nothing due to a missing kdialog package.

Hopefully, these issues can be sorted out by the time of release next month, however, realistically, some will probably remain. It's not all bad news though, several major pieces of software are on new versions: LXQt 2.2.0, Qt 6.8.3, Mozilla Firefox 142, LibreOffice 25.8, VLC 3.0.21, Featherpad 1.6.2, and Discover Software Center 6.4.5.

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Posted Friday 19 September 2025 at 6:17 pm AEST (my time).

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