Ubuntu gets monthly snapshot testing releases

To aid testing and ensure future Ubuntu (and Kubuntu etc) releases are in good shape, Canonical have announced monthly snapshots.

Canonical's VP of Engineering, Jon Seager, wrote a post on the official Discourse Forum going through the details. Talking about how things have changed with more rolling-release distros, immutable distros and so on with the goal here to "build a release process that takes advantage of modern release engineering practices, while retaining the resilience and stability of our six-monthly releases".

To be clear, they're not replacing their current normal releases, this is more about getting more automated testing done. However, it also makes it easier for testers to get their hands on upcoming releases for regular testing too.

As Seager said "Starting in May 2025, we’re introducing monthly snapshot releases for Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is not “moving to monthly releases” or adopting a rolling release model; we’re committed to our six-monthly releases with a Long Term Support (LTS) release every two years. That doesn’t mean that our release process should be exempt from the same scrutiny that the rest of our engineering processes are subject to."

As part of this, they've also recently formed a new 'Canonical Ubuntu Release Management Team' to help develop the process for all this to work alongside the main Ubuntu Release Team. Part of it is to help the team get away from "deep institutional knowledge, and toward clean well-documented automated workflows that are transparent, repeatable and testable". With their current model "failure modes are not detected until they’re urgent and blocking an imminent release" so this gives more opportunities to avoid that.

Source: Canonical