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Ubuntu 22.04, codenamed Jammy Jellyfish, was released on 21 April 2022.
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It was followed by Ubuntu 22.10 Kinetic Kudu on 20 October 2022.
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It was followed by Ubuntu 23.10 Mantic Minotaur on 12 October 2023.
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It was followed by Ubuntu 25.04 Plucky Puffinnwas on 17 April 2025
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It was followed by Ubuntu 25.10 Questing Quokka on 9 October 2025
All Linux distros keep publishing new versions: Fedora, Mint, Debian
Yet strangely, I don’t actually notice any change. I’m just a normie user. It seems only computer nerds understand why the new versions are game changers.
Apart from “increased security”, what is actually the point of these releases?
New features, fixing bugs, security fixes, hardware support, etc. Why would Linux updates be different than updates to any other OS?
I’m just wondering why do OS need new releases?
Is there really such a huge difference between Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10 ? Because I don’t see them.
What? Windows 7, 8, and 10 had completely different UI designs. Even if you ignore the technical differences, the UIs make these versions more easily distinguishable than most Linux distros. 7 was glassy (aero), 8 was flat, colorful, and square (metro), and 10 was also flat, but more refined and less colorful (fluent).
They are so drastically different that I could tell you which version is being used within 5 seconds of seeing a screenshot of a blank desktop with no icons and just the taskbar.
You’re on crack.
There were some pretty big differences in windows 8. Not sure how you wouldn’t have noticed them.
Yeah, this screams “the default browser is my operating system”/“chrome hasn’t changed in 10 years why do I need to update my computer”. Hell even assuming op is using their computer like a kiosk, you’d still have to notice a few differences. I’m partially blind and I can see lots of changes, lol.
I mostly use LibreOffice, Firefox, qBitTorrent, VLC and the Terminal.
That actually makes it more confusing. Unless you’re on a rolling release distro , each major version will have a different repository of software - newer Linux Distro releases having newer programs.
An example that’s more visible from the standard user POV would be an Ubuntu user seeing GNOME being updated up a major feature release between Ubuntu versions. Without updating to the new version of Ubuntu, they’d only see maintenance patches and minor feature additions rather than anything gamechanging
You could use something like OpenSUSE Tumbleweed where all software is updated on a rolling basis whenever updates are tested and ready. That might be for you but the downside is that big updates to software come “randomly” and could break your workflow. The point of version releases is usually to save the big feature-changing updates so they all come at a predictable point in time, and there’s usually a window to upgrade in so you can do it when most convenient. For Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. this happens every six months, so the difference between one version to the next isn’t likely to be huge, but many people prefer the predictability of an update cycle. You could also look at LTS distros which are supported for longer, but you have to wait longer for features.