Canonical today announced the release of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Resolute Raccoon, the latest version of its long-term supported Linux distribution.
“Ubuntu 26.04 LTS sets the example for providing best-in-class resilience while simultaneously embracing innovation and the advancement of open source,” Ubuntu engineering vice president Jon Seager writes. “By combining optimizations for silicon, the kernel, and the cloud with the latest upstream features, we’re delivering on our goal to bring the very best of open source to Ubuntu on whichever platform you choose.”
Ubuntu Long Term Support (LTS) releases are supported for a total of 15 years, though only the first five years are free. Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is optimized for AI development and production workloads and includes TPM-backed full-disk encryption, improved support for application permission prompting, Livepatch updates for Arm-based servers, Rust-based utilities for enhanced memory safety, and native support for industry-leading AI/ML toolkits like NVIDIA CUDA and AMD ROCm.
From a user experience perspective, Ubuntu 26.04 includes the GNOME 50 desktop with full native support for Wayland, numerous accessibility improvements, and improved support for Debian packages in App Center. It’s built on the Linux 7.0 kernel, which adds support for Intel Core Ultra Series 3 “Panther Lake” processors and features new kernel drivers and subsystems written in Rust.
As with Zorin OS 18.1, I’ve been using Ubuntu 26.04 in pre-release form for a week or so and will have a more complete write-up soon. You can learn more, and download Ubuntu 26.04, from the Ubuntu website.