OSes

Ubuntu Resolute Raccoon spits out Xorg, but still lets you run X11 apps

New LTS is here, with more tooling for GPGPU and AI workloads

Ubuntu 26.04 "Resolute Raccoon," the latest LTS release from Canonical, arrives with GNOME 50, Linux kernel 7.0, and drops the Xorg option from Ubuntu Desktop while still running X11 applications through Xwayland.

This release is based on kernel 7.0, uses GNOME 50, and comes with Firefox 150. These are a pleasingly round set of version numbers, but over Resolute's support lifetime, its Firefox versions will keep climbing, and as interim releases follow, the LTS Enablement Stack will also make newer kernels available. (systemd 260 arrived a little too late, so Resolute comes with systemd 259.) As the newest LTS version, Resolute will get free updates for the next five years, until 2031, and a further decade of security updates is available via Canonical's "Ubuntu Pro" service, which became free for up to five machines in 2022.

The default Ubuntu Desktop uses GNOME, as it has been since Ubuntu 17.10. We took a look at GNOME version 50 early last month, and at the beta version of Resolute at the end of the month. Although some of the bundled apps and accessories have been replaced, it's not vastly different from how GNOME 40 was in 2021, and it's only an incremental change from GNOME 3 a full decade before that. It looks great, and if you like GNOME, it's fine. However, there is a big functional difference in this release that is cosmetically invisible: it is now Wayland-only – there's no option to log in using Xorg. X11 apps can run thanks to Xwayland, but users doing some advanced things like screen capturing, screen sharing, and remote control, and so on, will need to find and adjust to new tools.

Alongside the default GNOME desktop edition, Edubuntu 26.04 also uses GNOME 50. Alternatively, there are eight other official desktop flavors, with different software bundles.

For those who prefer a traditional Windows-like layout, there are multiple options. Kubuntu 26.04 offers KDE Plasma 6.6, which is also used in Ubuntu Studio 26.04. If you like the idea of a relatively slim modern Gtk4-based desktop but a traditional layout, there's Ubuntu Budgie 26.04 with the Wayland-only Budgie 10.10. The lightest-weight flavor is Lubuntu 26.04, with LXQt 2.3.

Xubuntu 26.04 finally brings the current Xfce 4.20 desktop to an LTS version of Ubuntu, and for us, it offers the best combination of functionality, customizability, and light resource usage to be had in the Linux desktop space. For those who dislike Canonical's Snap packaging format, the special Xubuntu minimal edition comes with no snap packages at all. This means it's trivial to remove snapd. Then, you can install the extrepo command, and use it to enable, for instance, Mozilla's APT repository. That will let you install Firefox ESR directly from Mozilla using the trusty old apt command, or Chrome from Google's repos or whatever you prefer. Once the machine's on the web, you can copy-and-paste a couple of commands to block snapd from being reinstalled. Then you can switch to the current Firefox, or anything else, without snapd sneaking back in. You can also download Xubuntu Minimal as a separate, and much smaller, ISO file – which is not true of any of the other flavors.

We especially recommend Xubuntu for anyone who likes the twin-panel layout of GNOME 2, as sadly, there is no Ubuntu MATE 26.04. Project lead Martin Wimpress has moved to a new project, about which he presented a talk at the last Ubuntu Summit: Nøughty Linux, a new remix that he's working on. Its homepage remains a teaser, but the Github page has more info. Another traditionalist option is Ubuntu Cinnamon 26.04, which offers Cinnamon 6.4.13.

As one door closes – we hope temporarily – another opens: Ubuntu Unity 26.04 brings Canonical's in-house desktop from the mid-noughties back into the family. This remix skipped the 25.10 release cycle, as project lead Rudra Saraswat is busy with university studies. Some new maintainers stepped up, fixed a bunch of bugs, updated some components, and it's working well again. It reports that it contains Unity 7.7.1.

It is worth noting that Ubuntu Unity 26.04 is not an LTS release, though. None of the flavors get the full five years of support that the GNOME edition enjoys, but the longer established ones such as Kubuntu get three years of support.

As well as the various desktop editions, there is also the Server edition. We suspect that support revenues from this edition are what keep the lights on at Canonical. Ubuntu Server is available on x86-64, Arm64, PowerPC, RISC-V, and IBM Z mainframes, and while it has no desktop, it instead offers tools for server admins such as Juju for automation, the Multipass tool for provisioning VMs, MAAS for bare-metal network deployment, and LXD for managing whole-system containers and VMs.

The desktop version of 26.04 offers TPM-backed full disk encryption as a standard feature, but in this LTS, if you want an encrypted server, you must manually configure it.

This release of Ubuntu Server brings fresh versions of multiple developer tools. Java gets OpenJDK 25 LTS with CRaC, and Kotlin 2.0.4. Resolute also includes Microsoft's cross-platform runtime, .NET 10, and the new Zig programming language, although for now this only offers full support for x86-64 and Arm64.

Engineering lead Jon Seager, whom we interviewed at the last Ubuntu Summit, told The Register that the company is working on bringing Zig to PowerPC, S/390 and RISC-V as well, but called it a "bootstrapping effort." Support for Zig also means that there's a package of Mitchell Hashimoto's Ghostty terminal emulator in the repositories.

He told us that this LTS has a new approach for developer and virtualization tools. It now includes both Nvidia CUDA and AMD ROCm tools, and although it's not there yet, DOCA-OFED is coming. He said that there will be a dual-track container and VM stack, with both rolling and stable variants. For example, delivered at release are Docker 29, QEMU 10.2.1, libvirt 12.0.0, and these versions will stick through the lifetime of the LTS, but you can opt in to newer versions that track upstream.

Canonical's move towards Rust-based tooling continues, which Seager feels brings real benefits in reduced exposure to memory-safety related bugs, even if not everything is faster; it is "not just for setting Reddit on fire." Canonical has joined the Rust Foundation. He promised to "make interim releases crazy again," and the next Rust rewrite that the company is planning to adopt is ntpd-rs, potentially followed by RustTLS. "Other distributions are looking at this, too," he told us. "We're not doing this to keep it to ourselves. We'd love to see wider adoption in other distros."

Ubuntu Server is also available on various cloud platforms: the sub-site lists AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, and Oracle Cloud. Canonical has published a developer-focused article about how Ubuntu's toolchains have evolved. This LTS also brings support for authentication using Authd.

At the time of writing, the immutable Ubuntu Core edition is still on version 24, but an updated Core 26 is scheduled for release on May 7. The long-foretold Core Desktop edition is not likely to appear in the immediate future, but Seager told us that the company has made massive progress in the area of permissions prompting for Snap packages. "This is a remarkably complex piece of work," he said, affecting "the kernel, AppArmor, up through snapd, GNOME and GDM, up and down the stack," to make it work like a phone: so that it won't crash on new versions, and apps can just ask for new or changed permissions like on a phone. "This alone won't deliver Core Desktop, but it is foundational."

Ubuntu's documentation has visibly improved over the last few years. It has its own website with a detailed list of products, platforms, and functionality. The 26.04 release notes include links to useful subsidiary documents; for example, there is a page on changes from 24.04, the previous LTS release, and also a page on changes from 25.10, the previous interim release.

The desktop edition continues to grow – the ISO file is now 5.9 GB in size, and the recommended specs have risen too. Canonical now recommends at least a dual-core 2 GHz machine with 25 GB of free disk space, and the suggested minimum amount of RAM has gone up to 6 GB. To be fair, six gigs is really not very much even in these times of LLM-driven price inflation, and it will run pretty well in 4 GB. (Better still if you enable ZSwap and some other tweaks.) It's good to see the release notes explicitly recommending some of the lighter flavors for lower-spec systems:

If you want to try Resolute without dedicating a machine to it just yet, the company offers instructions for installation under VirtualBox. There are also now two different WSL2 editions, one for x86-64 Windows and one for Arm64 Windows.

The Reg FOSS desk has been running Ubuntu since the first ever release, 4.10 "Warty Warthog", in 2004. In all that time, only the first ever LTS release – 6.06 "Dapper Drake" – was significantly late: it arrived in June, while every other LTS was released in April of an even-numbered year. The regularity of Ubuntu releases makes for an interesting contrast with Microsoft's Windows NT, still the basis of Windows today: when the first version, Windows NT 3.1 arrived in 1993, Microsoft promised that it would receive quarterly Service Packs. We are much amused by the contrast between reality, and the comparisons we still sometimes hear about fragile flaky FOSS … as opposed to the predictable reliability of proper professional proprietary software, of course.

All versions of Ubuntu 26.04 are available for download now. Users of the existing 25.10 "Questing Quokka" release will start getting prompted to upgrade soon. The first point-release, Ubuntu 26.04.1, is scheduled for July 9, and that's when machines running 24.04 will start offering the upgrade.

As for the next release … the forthcoming and slightly Rustier Ubuntu 26.10 will be called "Stonking Stingray." ®