- Ubuntu 26.04 LTS “Resolute Raccoon” beta arrives with Linux 7.0, GNOME 50 and Mesa 26 as its core pillars.
- Canonical doubles down on Wayland, overhauls the Yaru look, and introduces new default apps like Resources and Showtime.
- Security takes center stage with TPM-based disk encryption, a simplified signed GRUB strategy and a stronger telemetry control panel.
- The beta targets testing only; the final LTS release is expected on April 23, 2026 with up to 10 years of support.
Canonical has pushed out the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS “Resolute Raccoon” beta, the last major milestone before this long-term support release goes stable. It is not just another incremental spin: the beta pulls together a modern kernel, a refreshed desktop stack and a series of under-the-hood changes that will shape Ubuntu for the rest of the decade.
While this build is already pretty polished, Canonical still labels it testing-only and not suited for production machines. The idea is to let enthusiasts, developers and admins explore what’s coming — Linux 7.0, GNOME 50, new tooling and a revamped security story — and help iron out any final issues ahead of the final release.
Release schedule, LTS scope and who this is for
Ubuntu 26.04 carries the codename Resolute Raccoon and is published as a long-term support (LTS) edition, which means five years of standard updates, stretching to roughly April 2031. With Ubuntu Pro, that window can be extended to around 2036 for many workloads, making this release the go‑to base for organisations that value stability over constant churn.
Development has followed Canonical’s usual cadence: feature freeze earlier in the year, UI and kernel freeze closer to spring, a beta snapshot in late March and a release candidate phase leading up to the stable image. Barring last‑minute surprises, the final Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is slated for April 23, 2026, so this beta is very close to what users will actually get.
The beta images are available for Ubuntu Desktop, Server, WSL and cloud setups, along with ARM and Raspberry Pi builds. On top of that, official flavours like Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Cinnamon, Ubuntu Studio and others inherit the same core base while offering different desktops and app selections.
Not every flavour is signing up for full LTS coverage, though. Projects such as Ubuntu MATE and Ubuntu Unity have indicated they won’t ship as LTS this time due to limited maintainer capacity. They will continue to exist and update, but without the extended support window that the main edition promises.
Linux 7.0 under the hood and hardware improvements
At the heart of this release sits the Linux 7.0 kernel, which, at beta time, is still in release‑candidate territory. Canonical clearly expects Linus Torvalds to finalise it in time for the April deadline and is already integrating the latest RC builds into Ubuntu’s images.
Jumping to this kernel generation brings better support for recent hardware, refinements in the scheduler, and extra hardening work that had been missing from previous LTS baselines. That is particularly good news for brand‑new laptops, desktops and servers that have appeared since the earlier 2024-2025 releases.
Firmware management also gets a structural rethink: instead of one large bundle, firmware packages are split by vendor. This means updates can be narrower, downloads smaller and unused drivers can be removed more easily, saving disk space and cutting down the time needed to keep systems up to date.
On the graphics side, Ubuntu 26.04 ships with Mesa 26.x (in the beta, 26.0.x), offering support for OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.4 along with a series of optimisations for Intel, AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. Fresh NVIDIA drivers, including the 590 branch, are part of the picture, and the stacks for both desktop rendering and compute workloads have been refreshed for current hardware.
GNOME 50 and a one‑way move to Wayland
The desktop story in this beta revolves around GNOME 50. Beyond the version bump, this is where GNOME severs ties with running a full session on Xorg, pushing Wayland as the only first‑class session type for the standard Ubuntu desktop.
That does not completely strand traditional applications: XWayland acts as a bridge for legacy X11 software, so most existing programs continue to run as usual. However, anyone who depends on a pure Xorg session — often due to old drivers or very specific workflows — may need to look at alternative flavours that stick to X11, or at least offer it as an option.
GNOME 50 also makes some long‑awaited quality‑of‑life tweaks. Variable refresh rate (VRR) support is now treated as a standard feature rather than an experiment, and fractional scaling is more polished, making mixed‑DPI multi‑monitor setups less of a headache.
In addition, the desktop tightens up power management controls, parental supervision options and accessibility features. For instance, improvements to the Orca screen reader and clearer system‑wide accessibility settings will be welcome news for users who rely on assistive technology.
Updated Yaru look, icons and visual tweaks
Ubuntu 26.04 comes with a refreshed Yaru theme, and although the changes are not radical, they are easy to spot. The first thing many people will notice is the set of new folder icons, now fully tinted with the chosen accent colour rather than just carrying a small coloured marker.
Application icons have been brought in line with this style, producing a more consistent appearance across the default set of tools. Classic apps like the calculator and some utilities ditch older glyphs in favour of designs that better fit the rest of GNOME’s iconography.
The Ubuntu Dock is now fully opaque instead of partially transparent, giving it a more solid visual presence at the side of the screen. Along with that, there is a new default wallpaper and a tweaked boot animation that keeps the branding recognisable but slightly more streamlined.
Performance in the Nautilus file manager also benefits from work on thumbnail generation and directory listing. Navigation in big folders feels snappier, while path autocompletion behaves in a more forgiving, case‑insensitive way, which can be handy on systems crammed with nested directories.
New default apps: Resources and Showtime
Long‑time Ubuntu users are used to the classic GNOME System Monitor, but in 26.04 that application steps aside. Its place is taken by Resources, a system monitoring tool written with GTK4 and Rust and distributed through the GNOME Circle ecosystem.
Resources surfaces CPU, memory, disk and network usage in a modern layout, aligns with the latest GNOME design patterns and integrates accessibility considerations more cleanly. For most people, it should offer the information they are used to, but with a more consistent user interface.
On the media front, Ubuntu adds Showtime as the new video player in its curated app set. The application follows libadwaita’s visual language and focuses on doing a small number of things cleanly rather than trying to become a complex media centre.
The App Center, Ubuntu’s software storefront, has been reworked to better handle both DEB packages and snaps. Filters and labelling have been improved so that users can tell more easily which format they are about to install, a detail administrators and power users have been asking for.
Security, TPM‑backed encryption and GRUB changes
Security is a major theme in this cycle. In the installer, Canonical now surfaces TPM‑backed full‑disk encryption more prominently, allowing users to rely on their Trusted Platform Module for disk protection with less manual configuration. This approach is increasingly demanded in corporate and public‑sector environments where strict data‑at‑rest policies apply.
A revamped Security center on the desktop gathers controls related to telemetric data, Ubuntu Pro integration and TPM usage. The goal is to make it clearer what is being collected, under which conditions, and how organisations can comply with regulatory requirements without digging through dozens of menus.
In terms of the boot chain, Canonical is working on a simpler and more tightly scoped signed GRUB for secure‑boot contexts. To cut down on potential attack surface, the company is moving towards dropping support for complex filesystems and layouts in the signed GRUB builds, especially features that historically come with security headaches.
That direction means the signed GRUB used with secure boot is expected to avoid directly handling setups built on Btrfs, ZFS, XFS in advanced roles, LVM stacks, md‑raid variants beyond RAID1 and LUKS‑encrypted boot partitions. Those technologies remain fully valid in the Linux kernel and the OS itself, but the bootloader that participates in secure boot is being kept lean.
The practical upshot is that standard installations will tend to use a plain, unencrypted EXT4 /boot partition with a signed GRUB. Users who want more exotic or heavily encrypted arrangements can still deploy them by moving away from a signed GRUB configuration, accepting the trade‑off of losing secure‑boot compliance.
Terminal life: sudo in Rust and improved tooling
Command‑line regulars will notice a couple of subtle but meaningful improvements. Ubuntu 26.04 introduces a reimplementation of sudo in Rust, drawing on that language’s safety guarantees for such a security‑sensitive component.
At a more visible level, password entry now shows asterisks when typing in sudo prompts, instead of leaving the cursor on a completely blank line. It is a small change, but it gives users reassurance that their keystrokes are being detected without exposing the password itself.
The apt package manager gains extra diagnostic tricks as well. Commands such as apt why and apt why-not help explain why a package is pulled into the system or blocked from installation, making dependency chains and conflicts easier to understand.
Time synchronisation is handled by Chrony 4.8, which continues to be tuned for better accuracy and resilience. That is especially important for servers and clusters where authentication protocols and audit trails depend on clocks being in tight alignment.
Software management and the missing “Software & Updates” tool
One of the more controversial decisions in this beta is the removal of the “Software & Updates” graphical utility from a default installation. For years, that application has been the go‑to tool for toggling repositories, third‑party PPAs and update behaviour via checkboxes and dropdowns.
Canonical’s view is that exposing all of that power in a single window can be risky for less‑experienced users. A couple of mistaken clicks can disable critical repositories or enable unstable channels, leaving a system partially updated or broken in subtle ways.
The functionality itself has not disappeared: the tool remains in the repositories and can be installed manually, and command‑line tools like software-properties-common are still available. However, the default user experience now nudges people towards safer defaults and more guided workflows.
Some of the more sensitive options have been distributed across the Security center, App Center and Ubuntu Pro settings, which aim to present them in context instead of gathering everything in one dense settings panel.
Removable media, legacy clean‑ups and container stack
Ubuntu 26.04 also tweaks how it handles external storage. USB sticks and external drives now mount under /run/media by default, rather than the long‑standing /media path. This layout is intended to better separate transient media from more permanent mounts and improve handling of read‑only filesystems.
Internally, the distribution continues to move away from legacy technologies such as cgroup v1 and outdated hardware support code. For everyday desktop users, these removals will mostly go unnoticed, but collectively they help the system shed ballast and concentrate on current architectures.
On the container front, Ubuntu ships with a modern Docker Engine (around the 29 series) that uses Containerd for image storage in fresh installs. Experimental support for nftables as the firewall backend is also part of the picture, aligning Ubuntu with contemporary Linux networking practices.
Put together, these shifts nudge the platform towards more predictable performance and a leaner base, which administrators will appreciate when running larger fleets of machines or container workloads.
amd64v3 packages and GPU/compute focus
Looking slightly ahead, Ubuntu 26.04 introduces the groundwork for amd64v3 (x86‑64‑v3) package builds. These variants take advantage of instruction sets present only on newer 64‑bit CPUs, offering the potential for modest speed‑ups on such machines.
These optimised builds are not the default, so older systems can continue to run the standard packages. Users with modern processors, on the other hand, will have the option to enable these variants to squeeze a little more performance out of their hardware without abandoning compatibility.
Canonical is also reinforcing Ubuntu’s role in GPU‑centric computing. Official repositories now provide ROCm packages for AMD GPUs, meaning that setting up that ecosystem is as straightforward as running a simple sudo apt install command, rather than going through custom scripts and external repositories.
Alongside ROCm, NVIDIA CUDA tooling and libraries are made more accessible within the archive, targeting workloads in AI, machine learning and scientific computing. For many researchers and data‑heavy organisations, this positions Ubuntu 26.04 as a strong candidate for new clusters and workstations.
Flavours, Wayland alternatives and beta usage advice
Even as the main edition bets entirely on GNOME with Wayland, the wider Ubuntu family keeps offering options. Flavours such as Lubuntu (with LXQt) or Xubuntu (with Xfce) continue to lean on X11 in various degrees, which can be useful for users tied to certain older graphics stacks or toolkits.
Kubuntu’s beta, for instance, brings Plasma 6.x on top of the same Ubuntu 26.04 base, giving fans of the KDE ecosystem a way to benefit from the new kernel, Mesa and firmware layout while keeping their preferred desktop environment.
Whatever the flavour, Canonical stresses that this is still a beta release. Most of the big work is done, but it is normal to encounter minor glitches: a visual oddity here, a crash in a less‑used utility there, or little inconsistencies in how some settings are presented.
For that reason, the company recommends experimenting with Ubuntu 26.04 beta in virtual machines, spare laptops or test servers, where issues won’t disrupt day‑to‑day work. Systems that handle real‑world tasks — from office PCs to production servers — are better off waiting for the final image and a first wave of updates.
Downloading and trying Ubuntu 26.04 LTS beta
Anyone curious about Canonical’s next LTS can grab the images from the official Ubuntu release servers. There are ISOs for 64‑bit Intel/AMD PCs, generic ARM images and specific builds for devices like the Raspberry Pi, along with server and cloud‑oriented variants.
The usual process applies: download the ISO, create a bootable USB stick or attach it to a virtual machine, and either install the system or run it in live mode. Systems installed from this beta will simply track updates as they come in and effectively roll forward into the final release next month.
Canonical continues to publish interim development snapshots as well, aimed at testers who want to stay on the bleeding edge of 26.04’s progress. The earlier you jump in, the more likely you are to encounter rough edges, so those builds are best reserved for people comfortable with reporting bugs and recovering from the occasional breakage.
All in all, Ubuntu 26.04 LTS beta paints a picture of a distribution that leans into a modern stack while still caring about long‑term stability: it adopts a cutting‑edge kernel, standardises on Wayland, refreshes its interface and apps, and adjusts its security posture around TPM and a leaner GRUB, all with the aim of being a dependable base for the next several years.
