Canonical has just announced the release of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS “Resolute Raccoon” Linux distribution about two years after Ubuntu 24.04 LTS “Noble Numbat” was introduced. The new version of the operating system comes with the just-released Linux 7.0 kernel, GNOME 50, and a range of updates and new features.
As a long-term support release, Ubuntu 26.04 LTS will be supported for 5 years until April 2031, and an Ubuntu Pro subscription provides access to ESM (Expanded Security Maintenance) updates for ten years, or until April 2036.
One of the benefits of using the latest Linux 7.0 kernel is support for Intel Core Ultra Series 3 “Panther Lake” processors, including Intel Xe3 integrated graphics and the integrated NPU (Neural Processing Unit) optimizations, which may also benefit Wildcat Lake processors (aka Panther Lake Lite).
Canonical also highlights TPM-backed full-disk encryption, improved support for application permission prompting, Livepatch updates for Arm-based servers, and Rust-based utilities for enhanced memory safety. Ubuntu 26.04 also brings native support for AI/ML toolkits such as NVIDIA CUDA and AMD ROCm.
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS now only supports GNOME 50 with the Wayland windowing system, and completely drops support for X11. Having that said, legacy X11 apps should still work fine via XWayland, and flavors like Xubuntu, Lubuntu, and Ubuntu MATE can work with X11. Developers get access to the latest version of the most popular toolchains and languages, including GCC 15.2. Python 3.14, LLVM 21, Rust 1.93, Golang 1.25, Zig 0.14.1, and OpenJDK 25.
Ubuntu now fully supports the RVA23 RISC-V profile, guest and host support for confidential computing on both Intel Trust Domain Extensions and AMD SEV, and the IgH EtherCAT Master module and Generic Ethernet driver for industrial applications.
Canonical also lists improvements in enterprise security and manageability through memory-safe Rust reimplementations of tools such as sudo, ls, cp, and mv (not yet see comments section), TPM-backed full-disk encryption in the Ubuntu installer, the integration of Landscape provisioning tools into the Ubuntu Desktop installer, and the addition of Authd open-source service allowing authentication through cloud identity providers, among other changes. WSL also integrates cloud-init and Ubuntu Pro for WSL for large-scale management and security compliance through Landscape. More Ubuntu 26.04 updates can be found on the changelog.
You can install Ubuntu 26.04 LTS for x86 64-bit (AMD64) or ARM64 by downloading the ISO from the Ubuntu website, or alternatively, upgrade your current Ubuntu 24.04 or Ubuntu 25.10 installation with:
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sudo do-release-upgrade -d |
Note that the hardware system requirements have changed, and Ubuntu Desktop 26.04 LTS now requires a 2 GHz dual-core processor or better, a minimum of 6 GB RAM, and 25 GB of free storage space for a comfortable experience, while Ubuntu Server requires 1.5 GB of RAM and 4GB of storage. If your system has 4GB of RAM or less, you may consider Xubuntu or Lubuntu instead, since 2GB of RAM is recommended. For reference, I tried Ubuntu 26.04 Desktop on a virtual machine with 4GB of RAM, so it’s not impossible to run on such a machine, but performance may be impacted.
For Raspberry Pi 5, you’ll need a board with at least 4GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. It’s not using the generic ARM64 image mentioned above, but instead, an Ubuntu 26.04 image for Raspberry Pi, or you can use the rpi-imager program as explained on Ubuntu Raspberry Pi page.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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