Back in May was the announcement by Canonical's kernel team that they were planning to ship Linux 6.17 in Ubuntu 25.10 as what will be the latest upstream kernel version when that Ubuntu release ships in October. But due to the timing of the Linux 6.17 release around late September and the Ubuntu 25.10 kernel freeze around the same time, it's led to some confusion with committing to a Linux 6.17-rc or potentially some suggesting Ubuntu 25.10 would ship with a Linux 6.16 kernel and then ship v6.17 as a stable release update. Well, the situation is more clear with Linux 6.17 having been merged now as the default kernel of Ubuntu 25.10.

While Linux 6.17 stable won't be out until late September, there is already a Linux 6.17 snapshot that was merged to the Ubuntu 25.10 archive and the default kernel - including for new Ubuntu 25.10 daily ISOs in the past few days.

Today I was carrying out a new Ubuntu 25.10 install on a new server and was delighted to see Linux 6.17 now being used by default, out-of-the-box on this upcoming Ubuntu release.

Linux 6.17 is here for Ubuntu 25.10. The Linux package page on Launchpad confirms Linux 6.17 having replaced its earlier 6.16 version in the Questing Quokka repository.

Great seeing Linux 6.17 in place for Ubuntu 25.10 with its many new features and ensuring that Ubuntu 25.10 ships with a leading-edge, upstream kernel version at launch. Ubuntu 25.10 is shaping up to be a cutting-edge release and for great testing ahead of the important Ubuntu 26.04 LTS cycle that follows.