Ubuntu 26.04 LTS arrives on April 23, 2026 as the most significant long-term support release since the Wayland transition. Codenamed “Resolute Raccoon,” it consolidates four release cycles of changes - from 24.10 through to 26.04 itself - into a single LTS package that desktop users, server admins, and developers will be drawing on until at least 2031.
This is not a minor polish release. The jump from 24.04 involves a Wayland-only GNOME desktop, a full suite of new default apps, Rust-based core utilities replacing decades-old GNU tools, Linux kernel 7.0, and tighter hardware security through TPM-backed full-disk encryption. Some familiar tools have also been removed or replaced, and the system requirements have been raised.
This guide covers every meaningful change: what it is, why it matters, and whether the trade-offs are worth it for your specific setup.
The core platform changes
Wayland only - X11 GNOME sessions are gone
The GNOME desktop session on X11/Xorg has been removed entirely. GNOME upstream dropped X11 support earlier this year, which means Ubuntu had no viable path to offering it regardless of preference.
In practice, most users will not notice. Ubuntu has defaulted to Wayland since 2021, and NVIDIA users have been on it since 2024 as a deliberate lead-up to this LTS. The real question is always about edge cases: applications that require raw X11 access, screen capture tools, remote desktop software, or legacy enterprise apps.
The answer for most of those is XWayland, which is included by default. It provides an X11 compatibility layer that handles the overwhelming majority of apps that were written against X11 APIs. If an app runs fine under XWayland (and most do), you will never know the difference.
That said, XWayland is not a perfect substitute. A small category of tools - things that read or write directly to the X display protocol at a low level, some automation tools, and a handful of screen-capture utilities - may behave differently or not at all. If that affects your workflow, the workarounds exist but are not trivial.
Other Ubuntu flavours like Lubuntu that do not use GNOME continue to offer X11 sessions.
Linux kernel 7.0
Ubuntu 26.04 ships with Linux kernel 7.0. The version bump from 6.x to 7.0 reflects nothing particularly dramatic in itself - the numbering moved because the minor version was getting unwieldy, not because some milestone feature landed. But 12 kernel releases have accumulated since 24.04 shipped with 6.8, and the improvements across those releases are real: better hardware support, continued AMD and NVIDIA driver work, improved power management on modern laptop silicon, and a steady accumulation of performance and security patches.
Users who kept up with Hardware Enablement (HWE) stack updates on 24.04 will have benefited from 6.11, 6.14, and 6.17 along the way. The 7.0 kernel will also be backported to 24.04 as a final HWE update in summer 2026.
One notable change for audio and low-latency workloads: the linux-lowlatency package is retired. If you relied on it, the replacement is lowlatency-kernel - a userspace package that handles low-latency tuning at boot via GRUB using the standard generic kernel, rather than requiring a separate kernel image.
Rust-based sudo and coreutils
Two foundational layers of the system have been replaced with Rust implementations.
sudo is now provided by sudo-rs. The command syntax has not changed, and for everyday use the transition is invisible. One small default change: password feedback is now enabled, so you will see asterisks when typing your sudo password in the terminal. Hit tab to temporarily suppress them if you prefer the traditional blank input.
The compatibility caveat is real but narrow. sudo-rs does not implement every flag and edge case of the original sudo. Handwritten admin scripts that rely on obscure sudo behaviour may behave differently. The original sudo remains available as the sudo-ws package for anyone who needs it.
The core CLI utilities - ls, cp, mv, cat, and the rest - are now provided by rust-coreutils in place of GNU coreutils. Again, the commands themselves have not changed; what changed is the underlying implementation. GNU coreutils remains available for compatibility.
The motivation is memory safety. Rust eliminates an entire class of memory corruption vulnerabilities that have historically plagued C code. For tools running with root privileges or processing untrusted input, that matters.
TPM-backed full-disk encryption
On new installs, Ubuntu 26.04 supports full-disk encryption tied to the system’s TPM 2.0 chip rather than a passphrase alone. When configured correctly, the drive can only be decrypted by the specific hardware it was installed on, and Secure Boot must be enabled.
The practical benefit: your data is protected even if the physical drive is removed and plugged into another machine. The practical limitation: this uses a kernel snap that may not include certain kernel modules, so edge-case hardware features may not work as expected. Not all TPM chips are supported, though the installer is explicit about this - it will explain why if your TPM is incompatible, and it will not surface the option at all if it cannot work on your system.
The setup flow correctly emphasizes generating and saving a recovery key. The Security Center app (new in this LTS) can generate replacement recovery keys later. LUKS passphrase encryption is still fully supported for systems without a compatible TPM.
One additional improvement: the installer handles BitLocker-protected Windows dual-boot setups significantly better. Installing Ubuntu with encryption alongside a BitLocker Windows partition is now supported through the Advanced Options section.
Dracut replaces initramfs-tools (new installs)
Fresh installs now use Dracut to generate the initial RAM filesystem at boot instead of initramfs-tools. The functional difference for end users is essentially nothing - the boot process looks and behaves the same. The architectural difference is that Dracut uses an event-driven model that is generally considered more predictable and maintainable, and is already standard across Fedora, RHEL, and most other major distributions.
Upgrades from 24.04 retain initramfs-tools.
Desktop and usability changes
GNOME 50 and the new default app stack
Ubuntu 26.04 ships with GNOME 50. Alongside the desktop shell upgrades, Canonical has replaced seven default applications:
Papers replaces Evince as the default document viewer. Built on Evince’s codebase but rebuilt substantially with Rust and GTK4/libadwaita, it adds ink annotation tools, freeform text boxes, and digital signature support.
Loupe replaces Eye of GNOME as the default image viewer. It uses the Glycin image rendering library for better fidelity, supports multi-touch gestures, and includes basic editing tools for crop, rotate, and flip.
Ptyxis replaces GNOME Terminal. It uses GPU-accelerated rendering, has a polished tab overview, supports container-aware profiles, and turns the header bar red when a sudo session is active - a small touch, but a useful safety signal.
Resources replaces GNOME System Monitor. The layout is cleaner, the data density is higher, and it covers hardware info that the old System Monitor skipped.
Showtime replaces Totem as the default video player (extended install only). GTK4/libadwaita with distraction-free on-canvas controls, multi-track audio and subtitle support, and playback speed control.
Security Center manages TPM encryption keys, Ubuntu Pro enrollment, and snap app permission prompting from one place. It debuted in Ubuntu 24.10; this LTS makes it standard.
Sysprof is for developers - a system-level performance profiling tool. Most users will never open it, but having it in the repos and present by default makes it more discoverable for the people who need it.
On upgrades, the new apps install alongside the old ones. You will temporarily have two terminals, two image viewers, and so on. The redundant apps can be removed manually or left alone.
Nautilus file manager improvements
The Nautilus file manager has received meaningful performance work: up to 5x faster directory loading and 10x faster thumbnail generation, with the thumbnail renderer now prioritising visible files first rather than working through the directory alphabetically.
The search interface has been redesigned with pill-shaped filter buttons and a calendar widget for date-bounded searches. File properties can now open as a floating window rather than blocking the current view. The ctrl + . shortcut opens the current folder directly in the terminal.
Other practical additions: cut files now show a dashed border so you know what is queued for a move, hidden dot files render with slight transparency to distinguish them from regular files at a glance, and bookmarks can be reordered by drag-and-drop from the sidebar.
One notable removal: Google Drive integration via GNOME Online Accounts no longer works for file browsing through Nautilus. Google-side API changes broke this; it is not something Canonical can fix unilaterally. You can still use your Google account for Gmail, Calendar, and Contacts. For Drive file access, InSync and rclone are the viable alternatives.
Display improvements: HDR, VRR, and fractional scaling
Three display features that previously required manual configuration or were absent entirely are now properly integrated:
HDR is available for supported monitors via Settings > Displays. Per-monitor brightness control works when HDR is enabled on multi-monitor setups. The honest caveat: Linux app support for HDR is still limited. Enabling it may make your screen look washed out unless you are using one of the few apps that handles it correctly (MPV being the clearest example).
Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) is enabled automatically where hardware supports it. Previously this required a gsettings flag.
Fractional scaling now supports finer increments - 133% and 166% are now available alongside the previous 125%, 150%, 175% options. The rendering uses exact quotients rather than rounded values, which produces sharper text and UI elements at non-integer scales.
Legacy X11 apps running under XWayland have a separate scaling toggle. Not every legacy app scales cleanly, so if anything looks oversized or blurry after enabling fractional scaling, Settings > Displays has the override.
APT improvements
The apt command-line tool has received a significant output refresh. Coloured output, column-aligned formatting, and a change that puts package removals last in the list (and in red) all make the output easier to parse at a glance.
More practically: new commands. apt why <package> and apt why-not <package> explain the dependency reasoning behind why something is or is not installed - genuinely useful when untangling a complicated dependency chain. history-info and history-list bring transaction history browsing. A new package solver handles dependency resolution.
Expanded bash-completion support is included. history-undo and history-rollback are flagged as coming in a subsequent release.
Notification grouping
Notifications in the message tray now stack by source. When an app generates multiple notifications, they collapse into a grouped stack rather than filling the tray with an ever-growing list. Individual items within a stack expand with a click. The behaviour matches what Android and macOS have done for years and was long overdue.
Software Updater indicator
The Software Updater now places an indicator in the top panel when updates are pending. The previous behaviour - a window appearing and stealing focus mid-task - was a long-running irritant. If you do not want the persistent indicator, it can be hidden through its own dropdown menu.
Ubuntu Dock changes
The dock is no longer transparent by default, switching to an opaque background to match the main panel. Transparency can be re-enabled with a single terminal command. Right-clicking an app on the dock now shows the app name and an App Center link in the context menu.
Wellbeing and parental controls
A new Wellbeing panel in Settings provides optional screen-time tracking. You can view daily computer usage, set daily limits with an optional greyscale tint when the limit is reached, and configure break reminders. Parental controls for managed accounts - screen time limits and bedtime schedules - are available via the malcontent-gui package (not preinstalled).
Whether you use any of this is personal preference. The infrastructure for it is now built into the base system.
Accessibility
The accessibility menu at the login screen has moved to the lower-right corner, making the on-screen keyboard, screen reader, and screen magnifier available before login without needing to reach an awkward corner of the screen. A new “reduce motion” setting dials down UI animations across the desktop for users who find them disorienting.
System management changes
Firmware package split
The linux-firmware package has been split into 18 vendor-specific sub-packages. All are installed by default, but users who know they do not need certain firmware sets (Mellanox drivers, for example, on a workstation that will never see an InfiniBand adapter) can remove them. The practical benefit is bandwidth: previously, fixing a single driver in one vendor’s firmware required downloading the entire 500MB+ firmware bundle. Now only the affected sub-package needs to update.
AMD and NVIDIA AI stacks in the repos
NVIDIA CUDA and AMD ROCm are now available directly from the Ubuntu repositories via apt. Neither is preinstalled, but having them packaged and maintained by Canonical eliminates the dependency wrestling that has historically made setting up GPU compute environments on Ubuntu awkward. This is relevant primarily for developers doing machine learning or AI workload testing.
Telemetry controls
Canonical’s opt-in telemetry system has been overhauled. The underlying technology has been modernised, and user-facing controls are now in Settings > Privacy & Security > Telemetry. If you previously opted in, the system will check in more frequently, including after major OS upgrades. Everything is still opt-in; if you opted out, nothing changes.
Software & Updates tool removed (new installs)
The Software & Updates GUI tool is no longer included on fresh installs. Canonical’s rationale is that some of its features - particularly PPA management and update channel controls - posed integrity risks if misused. The tool is still available to install from the repos, and upgrade users from 24.04 will retain their existing installation.
The loss of Additional Drivers through that tool is the more immediately annoying consequence. There is no GUI path for managing proprietary driver selection at launch. The ubuntu-drivers command-line tool is the workaround.
Startup Applications removed
GNOME 50 added per-app autostart toggles to Settings > Applications. Since the functionality is now native to GNOME, the Startup Applications utility has been dropped. The gap is that the GNOME settings panel does not support running arbitrary scripts or custom commands on login - only launching installed apps. For script-based autostart needs, the traditional ~/.config/autostart/ directory and a custom .desktop file still work.
Chrony + NTS as the default time server
Network Time Security (NTS) is now the default time synchronisation protocol. NTS adds authenticated encryption to NTP, preventing trivial time spoofing. For most users this is invisible infrastructure; for security-sensitive environments it is a meaningful default improvement.
What to expect when upgrading from 24.04
A clean install gets you the full 26.04 experience: Dracut, TPM encryption, the complete new app stack. An in-place upgrade gets you most of it but retains initramfs-tools, keeps your old default apps installed alongside the new ones, and carries forward any configuration you already had.
There are a few things worth checking before upgrading:
- Scripts using sudo flags - Test them against the new
sudo-rsimplementation. The originalsudo-wsis in the repos if you need to roll back that specific component. - Google Drive via Nautilus - If you relied on this, set up an alternative (rclone or InSync) before upgrading.
- Additional Drivers - If you need to manage proprietary drivers, note that the GUI path is gone.
ubuntu-drivers listandubuntu-drivers installhandle this from the terminal. - linux-lowlatency - If your audio workflow depended on the lowlatency kernel, the replacement is
lowlatency-kernelwith GRUB boot parameters.
The omgubuntu.co.uk breakdown of Ubuntu 26.04 changes since 24.04 is a useful cross-reference for the full cumulative changelog including smaller UI tweaks and app updates not covered here.
The bigger picture
Ubuntu 26.04 is a release that bets on several things simultaneously: that the Linux ecosystem has genuinely moved past X11, that Rust implementations are mature enough to replace C tools in a production OS, and that hardware security features like TPM are worth the complexity they introduce.
Those bets are largely justified. Wayland compatibility is better than it has ever been. sudo-rs is production-quality for the vast majority of use cases. TPM encryption, when your hardware supports it, provides a meaningful security boundary that a passphrase alone cannot.
The removals - Google Drive integration, the Software & Updates GUI, Startup Applications - are more annoying than damaging. Each one has a workaround. But they are genuine regressions for specific workflows, and the honest position is to acknowledge that rather than pretend they do not exist.
For most Ubuntu users coming from 24.04, this is a straightforward upgrade with meaningful improvements. The system is faster, the default app quality is higher, the security posture is stronger, and the overall polish of the GNOME 50 desktop is clearly improved. That is a reasonable case for upgrading.
