Ubuntu 26.04 - A great improvement

By GhostsAreHaunted

Every two years, Canonical releases a new long-term support release of their classic Ubuntu operating system. This year is no different, with Ubuntu 26.04 taking the stage soon on the 23rd of April, 2026. Users should look forward to upgrading, as well as look into the new features and changes brought forward in this release.

Higher system requirements

The system requirements in for Ubuntu 26.04 remain mostly the same, except for the change in the amount of RAM. Users are now expected to have a minimum of six gigabytes of RAM, opposed to the classic four gigabytes that has been required for a long time now at this point. Windows 11 only demands four gigabytes, however Ubuntu’s system requirements aim for a smoother experience, not a minimum baseline. Despite this change, most people should be able to run the next Ubuntu release just as fine as any other release, as most computers released nowadays have eight or more gigabytes of RAM.

New versions of your favorite applications

Obviously, new release, new versions of applications. Firefox, the included web browser in Ubuntu, will be shipped with version 149, which will most likely be updated to 150.

• Firefox 149 includes the new Split View feature, letting you view two tabs at a time, the new free Firefox VPN (virtual private network), and hardware acceleration for PDFs to make them load faster.
• Ubuntu’s Microsoft Office equivalent, known as LibreOffice, will be shipped with version 25.8, which features word spacing changes, end zones, new commands, and more.
• GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Software) obviously got it’s major overhaul from 2.10 to 3.0, which offers an absolute landslide of changes to the image editing software.

New version of GNOME

GNOME is Ubuntu’s default desktop experience, which got a major update from GNOME 46 (from the last LTS release, which was 24.04, if you are on 25.10, you will be on GNOME 49) to GNOME 50. This release features:

• The ability to automatically start applications when you boot up your computer. You can select these in the Settings application.
• Optimized fractional scaling
• Reduced font size for the default monospace font
• New Sysprof tool, which helps identify performance issues much easier.

New kernel version

The new kernel that Ubuntu 26.04 will be using is the Linux 7.0 kernel. This kernel features:

• up to 40% faster container creation times
• Major hardware improvements for newer devices
• More Rust integration
• Updates for AMD RDNA 3.5, Intel Xe Graphics, Intel TSX
• Better filesystem security

Many more changes have occurred under the hood, look at the patch notes for more: Ubuntu release notes for 26.04