---
title: "Linkerd Edge Release Roundup: December 2025"
url: https://daily.dev/posts/linkerd-edge-release-roundup-december-2025-3qkrcatei
source_url: https://linkerd.io/2025/12/08/linkerd-edge-release-roundup
type: article
source: "Linkerd"
published: 2026-08-23T12:19:47.638Z
updated: 2026-08-23T12:41:01.126Z
tags: ["kubernetes", "infrastructure", "opentelemetry", "service-mesh", "gateway-api"]
reading_time: 8
upvotes: 0
comments: 0
language: en
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Linkerd Edge Release Roundup: December 2025

**[Linkerd](https://daily.dev/sources/linkerd)** · 8 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

Covers Linkerd edge releases from September through November 2025, culminating in the recommended edge-25.11.3. Key breaking changes include merging the proxy-init image into the proxy image, removing the ip_port_subscribers metric in favor of workload_subscribers, dropping OpenCensus tracing support in favor of OpenTelemetry, removing the linkerd-jaeger extension in favor of native OpenTelemetry config, and the linkerd-crds Helm chart no longer installing Gateway API CRDs by default. Several intermediate releases (25.10.2 through 25.10.6, and 25.11.2) are explicitly marked not recommended due to bugs like SPIRE mesh expansion failures and tracing collector crashes.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://linkerd.io/2025/12/08/linkerd-edge-release-roundup>

## Questions this post answers

### How do I fix references to the linkerd proxy-init image after upgrading to a recent Linkerd edge release?

As of edge-25.11.3, Linkerd merged the proxy-init image into the proxy image to simplify image management and reduce overall image size. Any explicit references to the proxy-init image must be updated to point to the proxy image instead, since the separate proxy-init image is no longer shipped.

_Track breaking image changes like this before they surprise a mesh upgrade, on daily.dev._

### Why did Linkerd's ip_port_subscribers metric stop appearing after I upgraded?

Linkerd removed the ip_port_subscribers metric starting in edge-25.10.3 and replaced it with a lower-cardinality workload_subscribers metric to reduce metric cardinality and improve performance. Dashboards or alerts referencing ip_port_subscribers need to be updated to use workload_subscribers instead.

_Keep dashboards in sync with mesh metric renames by following updates on daily.dev._

### How do I configure tracing in Linkerd now that the linkerd-jaeger extension is removed?

Since edge-25.10.1, Linkerd dropped the linkerd-jaeger extension in favor of configuring OpenTelemetry tracing directly, using controller.tracing.enable and controller.tracing.collector.endpoint when installing Linkerd. OpenCensus trace protocol support was also removed as of edge-25.10.2, leaving OpenTelemetry as the only supported tracing protocol.

_Follow service mesh tracing migrations like this one on daily.dev before they break your setup._

## Similar posts on daily.dev

- [Linkerd 2.20, the Latest Release of the Cloud-Native Service Mesh, Arrives](https://daily.dev/posts/linkerd-2-20-the-latest-release-of-the-cloud-native-service-mesh-arrives-ketitd8if) · Cloud Native Now · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

---

Tags: [#kubernetes](https://daily.dev/tags/kubernetes), [#infrastructure](https://daily.dev/tags/infrastructure), [#opentelemetry](https://daily.dev/tags/opentelemetry), [#service-mesh](https://daily.dev/tags/service-mesh), [#gateway-api](https://daily.dev/tags/gateway-api)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/linkerd-edge-release-roundup-december-2025-3qkrcatei)