Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Released — Wayland-Only Desktop and Mandatory cgroup v2

Canonical has released Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, codenamed Resolute Raccoon, as the next long-term support version of its desktop and server Linux distribution. The release, announced on April 23, brings GNOME 50, Linux kernel 7.0, and a set of platform changes that move Ubuntu further away from its older compatibility layers.

The most visible change for desktop users is that Ubuntu 26.04 LTS ships without an Xorg session. That means Wayland is now the only supported desktop display server in the default LTS release. Xorg, the long-running X Window System implementation used by Linux desktops for decades, has been steadily phased out across major distributions as Wayland has matured.

Wayland handles display rendering and input in a different way from Xorg, with a simpler architecture and tighter integration with modern desktop environments. Ubuntu has supported Wayland for years, but making it the only option in an LTS release marks a clearer break from older desktop assumptions, especially for software and workflows that still depended on X11 behavior.

On the system side, Canonical is also moving Ubuntu 26.04 LTS fully to cgroup v2 through systemd 259. Cgroups, short for control groups, are a Linux kernel feature used to limit, account for, and isolate resources such as CPU, memory, and I/O. The earlier cgroup v1 hierarchy is now dropped entirely, which aligns Ubuntu with the direction taken by the wider Linux ecosystem.

The release also adds TPM-backed full disk encryption. A TPM, or Trusted Platform Module, is a hardware security component that can store cryptographic material and help verify system state during boot. Canonical says this gives Ubuntu another option for protecting local data on supported hardware, especially in environments that care about device-level security and managed deployments.

For developers and AI users, Ubuntu 26.04 LTS includes native support for NVIDIA CUDA and AMD ROCm. CUDA is NVIDIA’s software stack for GPU computing, while ROCm is AMD’s equivalent open ecosystem for GPU acceleration. Native support matters because a lot of machine learning, scientific computing, and inference tooling depends on GPU access without extra packaging work or custom setup.

Canonical is positioning the release as an LTS, or long-term support, version, which makes it the kind of Ubuntu build many organizations adopt as a baseline for desktops, servers, and fleet deployments. LTS releases are the versions that tend to matter most in enterprise IT because they stay supported for a longer period and get used in production systems where upgrade cadence is slower.

GNOME 50 is another sign of how far this release has moved the desktop stack forward. Ubuntu continues to use GNOME as its primary desktop environment, and the new version brings the current upstream feature set and interface updates into the LTS channel rather than holding them for a short-term release.

Kernel 7.0 is similarly significant for hardware support and system behavior. Newer kernels typically bring updated drivers, better device compatibility, and improvements to scheduling, networking, and storage, which is one reason LTS releases are often treated as reset points for infrastructure teams.

The combination of a Wayland-only desktop, mandatory cgroup v2, TPM-backed disk encryption, and first-class GPU compute support makes Ubuntu 26.04 LTS a fairly decisive release for Canonical’s platform direction, especially as the company continues to align the distribution with current Linux defaults and modern hardware requirements.