On April 23, the new version of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, codenamed “Resolute Raccoon”, was released and can be downloaded and installed from the official website ubuntu.com.
“Resolute Raccoon is based on enhancements aimed at improving stability that were introduced in interim releases, including full disk encryption with TPM support, improved permission request support for applications, Livepatch updates for Arm-based servers, and Rust-based utilities for enhanced memory security. This release includes built-in support for leading industry AI/ML toolsets such as NVIDIA CUDA and AMD ROCm, making Ubuntu 26.04 LTS an ideal platform for AI development and production tasks.”
John Seeger, Vice President of Ubuntu Development at Canonical.
A brief overview of the main changes:
- Abandonment of the X11 GNOME session in favor of Wayland; the upstream project has discontinued support for X.Org, and the 'Ubuntu on X11' option is no longer available on the GDM login screen. Applications dependent on X11 run through the XWayland compatibility layer, which is installed by default, and this solution does not apply to other desktop environments.
- Canonical has replaced the reference implementation of sudo with sudo-rs — a Rust-based alternative that is compatible with existing /etc/sudoers files. The classical version has been renamed to sudo.ws and remains in the repositories; switching is done through the alternatives system. In sudo-rs, the display of asterisks when entering a password (pwfeedback) is enabled by default.
- The ls, cp, mv, cat, and other basic command-line utilities are now provided by the rust-coreutils package — a project uutils/coreutils. At the time of release, compatibility with the reference GNU implementation was incomplete, so GNU coreutils remain installed as a fallback option and can be switched via update-alternatives.
- The distribution is shipped with Linux 7.0 — the kernel was released on April 12, 2026. The transition to a 'round' number is justified by Linus Torvalds' tradition: the next kernel after 6.19 received the major number 7.0 rather than 6.20. In this release, Rust support in the kernel has been moved from experimental to stable; a self-healing metadata mechanism has been added in XFS. The sched_ext framework based on eBPF, which appeared in Ubuntu back in 25.04, allows for the implementation of schedulers in user space.
- On new installations, Dracut is used as the initial boot image generator instead of initramfs-tools. This transition occurred back in Ubuntu 25.10. Dracut utilizes systemd in the initramfs and supports Bluetooth and NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF). The initramfs-tools package remains supported, and switching between implementations is possible if necessary.
- TPM-based disk encryption
The installer has gained support for full disk encryption based on TPM 2 with mandatory Secure Boot. This feature uses the kernel in the form of a snap package and does not cover all TPM chips; the installer notifies if the TPM is not suitable. The backup recovery key can be reissued in the 'Security Center' app, and the firmware update utility warns about firmware updates that may affect the TPM state. LUKS encryption with a password still works and does not require TPM. Additionally, the installation alongside an encrypted BitLocker Windows partition has been improved: through the 'Advanced settings' section in the Ubuntu installer, it can be installed with encryption without affecting Windows.
- The GNOME desktop environment has been updated from version 46 to 50. The most noticeable changes are in the folder icons: a rich fill based on the accent color of the desktop (by default orange) and fine engraving of logos. A large part of the Yaru set has been optically redesigned, with updates to the LibreOffice icons, Snapshot application, and trash.
For reference: Ubuntu is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Debian. The main developer and sponsor is Canonical. The project is currently actively developed and supported by the free community. More information can be found on the Wikipedia page.
Source: linux.org.ru
