Inside Canonical's Plan To Make Ubuntu 26.04 The Linux Desktop That Finally Goes Mainstream

Resolute Raccoon: The Ubuntu 26.04 mascot.

Canonical

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ZDNET's cardinal takeaways

• Shuttleworth still sees dream for a Linux desktop pinch wide appeal.
• Seager stressed Canonical is improving its improvement pipeline.
• Both executives judge successful Rust for improved Linux security.

At nan Ubuntu Summit 25.10 astatine Canonical office successful London, Mark Shuttleworth, laminitis and CEO, and Jon Seager, VP of engineering for Ubuntu, explained their imagination and plans for 26.04, Resolute Raccoon, nan adjacent semipermanent support (LTS) of Ubuntu Linux. 

Here's what they told ZDNET astir what you tin expect.

Shuttleworth connected nan Ubuntu 26.04 imagination

Shuttleworth told ZDNET that he's an open-source existent believer. Canonical has been, and will proceed to be, a institution wherever users "can activity crossed nan afloat open-source spectrum. If you want to usage unfastened root connected nan cloud, we will travel to nan unreality pinch you. And if you want to usage it connected tiny, small devices, we will beryllium location for you arsenic well."

On nan desktop, Shuttleworth is alert that desktop Linux fragmentation is simply a superior problem: "If we want Linux to beryllium a existent world alternative, we request to do thing that has a batch of heft down it, and we request not to tear each different down." 

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Ironically, though, he credited Canonical's grounded Unity desktop approach for helping nan institution go much profitable than ever, arsenic nan rumor forced nan business to attraction connected server, cloud, and IoT offerings. 

That's not to opportunity Shuttleworth is nary longer a Linux desktop-believer: "I would for illustration to beryllium portion of unfastened root winning nan desktop." While Ubuntu 26.04 will proceed to usage GNOME for its default desktop, he had bully things to opportunity astir nan American Linux PC institution System76 and its caller Rust-based COSMIC desktop. In fact, System76 presented a COSMIC convention astatine nan Ubuntu Summit. 

Shuttleworth continued: "I'm a believer successful nan imaginable of Linux to present a desktop that could person wider and cosmopolitan appeal." But he besides thinks "the open-source organization needs to understand that building desktops for group who aren't engineers is different. We request to understand that nan 'simple and conscionable works' is besides really important."

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It's wrong this discourse that Shuttleworth and Seager are steering Ubuntu toward its adjacent awesome release, Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, pinch an eager but cautious modernization plan. Their schedule emphasizes memory-safe foundational utilities, enhanced automation, community-centric documentation, and information features tailored for nan desktop and cloud.

Seager connected nan Ubuntu 26.04 specifications

These plans person been coming together since February, erstwhile nan recently appointed Seager group retired how, moving forward, Canonical and nan Ubuntu developer squad would steer a caller people successful building Ubuntu. The extremity was to fundamentally rethink engineering practices for communication, automation, process, and modernization.

Specifically, for 2026 and beyond, Canonical intends to create a much transparent, accessible, and community-driven Ubuntu build process by consolidating archiving and connection channels, making it easier for caller contributors to find paths to involvement. For example, nan Matrix instant messaging based connected nan Ubuntu Community Matrix server will beryllium Ubuntu developers' superior connection system. 

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Canonical is besides consolidating its archiving for users and developers. Instead of an afterthought, Seager said he believes "Documentation is simply a captious shape of communication." Today, "much of it is fragmented crossed different platforms, duplicated and/or contradictory, aliases simply difficult to find." Tomorrow, it will beryllium unified into an accessible and meticulous form.

Canonical is besides moving difficult connected automating nan build strategy for some nan distribution and its packages. The extremity is to displacement distant from error-prone, dull, but demanding processes to highly automated systems utilizing modern improvement tooling.

The goal, Seager explained, "is not conscionable to automate arsenic overmuch arsenic imaginable (thereby expanding our corporate capacity), but besides to simplify processes wherever we can. Much of Ubuntu's build process *is* automated, but those systems are disparate and often opaque to each but our astir knowledgeable contributors." By bringing them together into a accordant improvement pipeline, nan full build strategy will beryllium improved. 

The institution is besides streamlining and modernizing task workflows by adopting devices for illustration Temporal for durable orchestration. Seager told ZDNET: "Temporal is fundamentally what I deliberation will alteration nan Ubuntu org to build a distributed strategy that's rather analyzable without needing to beryllium distributed systems engineers." The extremity is to grip standard while empowering contributors, leveraging well-documented, peer-reviewed processes that trim bottlenecks and over-reliance connected tribal knowledge.

Finally, Ubuntu is adopting nan memory-safe Rust language. Seager said nan engineering squad is focused connected replacing cardinal strategy components pinch Rust-based alternatives to heighten information and resilience, starting pinch Ubuntu 25.10. He stressed that resilience and representation safety, not conscionable performance, are nan main drivers: "It's nan enhanced resilience and information that is much easy achieved pinch Rust ports that are astir charismatic to me". This move is echoed successful Ubuntu's take of sudo-rs, nan Rust implementation of sudo, pinch fallback and opt-out mechanisms for users who want to usage nan old-school sudo command. 

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In summation to sudo-rs, Ubuntu 26.04 will usage nan Rust-based uutils/coreutils for Linux's default halfway utilities. This setup includes ls, cp, mv, and dozens of different basal Unix command-line tools. This Rust reimplementation intends for functional parity pinch GNU coreutils, pinch improved information and maintainability.

On nan desktop front, Ubuntu 26.04 will besides bring seamless TPM-backed afloat disk encryption. If this attack reminds you of Windows BitLocker aliases MacOS FileVault, it should. That's nan idea.

Seager besides told ZDNET that Snap-based applications will travel pinch a granular permissions framework, "permissions prompting," for desktop apps successful Ubuntu 26.04.

He explained nan approach: "The intent is to harvester powerful container-style information pinch upfront, user-driven approval. One of Snap's features is its sandbox, but it tin besides beryllium irritating. If you effort to do thing and nan sandbox prevents it, sometimes nan app crashes, aliases it conscionable simply doesn't do nan point it was expected to." Moving ahead, "You'll get a punctual saying, 'Firefox would for illustration to entree your Downloads directory. Is that okay?'" 

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The model isn't fresh yet. Seager said this effort has "a really heavy portion of activity correct down done nan kernel and AppArmor [the Linux information program] and threat and a desktop client." If each goes well, permissions prompting will beryllium fresh by nan clip Ubuntu 26.04 ships.

He added that Ubuntu 26.04 will erstwhile again push for "the very latest type of GNOME [probably GNOME 48] and nan very latest kernel," continuing its contented of shipping up-to-date guidelines components. If that attack intends Canonical will request to support a Linux kernel that's not an LTS type itself, Canonical will do conscionable that. 

The caller Ubuntu will besides characteristic much Flutter-based apps. Flutter is simply a Google level that uses nan open-source Dart programming language. Flutter enables developers to create multiple-operation strategy apps for almost immoderate level from a azygous codebase. In Ubuntu 26.04, this capacity will see nan Ubuntu App Store, nan Installer, and nan Security Center.

What do you think? Personally, I'm looking guardant to nan adjacent Ubuntu. It sounds for illustration a existent winner.