Ubuntu 26.04: Reliable Desktop Linux

Welcome to another video from explaining computers. com. This time we're going to look at the Ubuntu 2604 Linux DRO which has just been released. This provides a very professional desktop computing experience as well as being the foundation for many other distros. So, let's go and take a closer look.

Right, it's about 7:30 p. m. on April the 23rd, 2026, and Ubuntu 2604, code named the Resolute Raccoon, has just been released. And if we go across to the download page for the desktop edition, and scroll down, we find the little fella staring at us just here. As we can see, Ubuntu 2604 is labeled LTS, which stands for long-term support and means that it will receive 5 years of free security and maintenance updates, taking us to April 2031. However, this can be extended to up to 15 years if we choose to subscribe to Ubuntu Pro. And if we go across to the subscriptions page and then click on myself, we see that Ubuntu Pro is free for personal use on up to five machines. Back on the download page, let's take a look at the system requirements, which are a 2 GHz dual core processor, 6 GB of RAM, and 25 GB of drive space. 6 GB of RAM is an increase from the 4 GB of RAM that has been a requirement for desktop Ubuntu since 2018. In practice, Ubuntu 2604 will probably run just fine on a 4 GB machine. And it's a shame that the recommended requirement has increased when memory prices are so high. But regardless, let's download the ISO file, which gives us the opportunity to sign up for a newsletter if we wish. But I think I'll just click on save. There we go. And as the servers are probably a little busy right now, we'll use a magic of filmmaking to speed on through. And there we are. Our download has completed. And if we minimize the browser, we can see we're currently running Windows 10 as I imagine that many Windows 10 users will be migrating to Linux in a few months time. Here I've got Bellena Etcher eagerly waiting to write our ISO file to a USB drive which needs to be at least 8 GB in size. And I've already got a drive inserted and selected. So let's select our Ubuntu 604 ISO file. There it is. And we can now click on flash. We'll then again summon up the magic of film making to accelerate time. And do note that writing the Ubuntu ISO file to the USB drive will delete everything from the USB drive.

Greetings. I've now put our USB drive into my i510400 test system. So, let's turn on the power. And as we boot up, I'll let you know that this computer has 16 GB of RAM and an Nvidia GT1030 graphics card, as I like to see how a Linux DRO handles driver support for an older Nvidia GPU. So, let's speed on through until something exciting happens. There we are. And it wants us to confirm our language, which I will do. Next, we have some potential accessibility options. I will here go to seeing and select large text so we can see things more easily. And after that I'll confirm my keyboard layout for me to be English UK. Next I'll confirm we're using a wired internet connection. We most definitely are. And then we have two options either to install Ubuntu or to try Ubuntu running from the USB drive. And whilst here I'm going straight to a full install. I would strongly suggest that before you install any Linux distro, you should always run it from a USB drive. Taking here the second option just to check that all of your hardware will be supported. This said, we'll now do our full install. I'll click on next where we now have three options and the second two are useful for people who are rolling out Ubuntu to lots of users and need to automate things like user creation and configuration. But for a standard person install, we should stick with the first option of interactive installation. Next, we can opt for either a default selection of applications or an extended set of applications. And I'm going to take the extended set which includes programs like Libra Office. Next, we have the option to install recommended proprietary software, which will include things like Nvidia GPU drivers. So, I'm definitely going to click the first one here. I'd also recommend you click the first option here. And I'd also recommend you always click the second option for downloading support for additional media formats. And here in Ubuntu 2604, these have been updated and now include the non-free AAC codec for supported Bluetooth headsets. Next, we have options for how we want to install Ubuntu. Where here I'm going to take the middle option to a raised disc and install Ubuntu. where here in Abuntu 2604 we have a new screen in the installer. It used to be previous we just go back over here. There was an advanced options thing under here but now there isn't an advanced options there because we now have this encryption dialogue where as you can see there are three options. One is to not encrypt the system drive. The second is traditional Linux full disk encryption using a passphrase, which means you'd have to enter a passphrase every time the computer booted up so it could access your encrypted drive. And the third option is to use hardwarebacked encryption, which means encrypting your drive on a system running secure boot with a TPM 2. 0 chip. And the advantage of this is that it provides automatic booting from an encrypted drive without having to enter a passphrase on boot. This option has been previously available in Ubuntu on an experimental basis, but it's now fully production ready and so included here very directly in the installer. And if for example you're going to be using Iuntu on a laptop, you may well want to encrypt the system drive either using the hardware option or the standard option just in case someone steals your laptop and tries to get your data off your drive. But here this is a test install on a desktop PC. And so I'm going to select no encryption. Next we need to create an account. And do note this is just a local account on this computer. There we go. And now I just need to confirm my location, which is fine. And here we are. We've got everything set up for the installation where we can review choices if we wish to, but everything looks okay. And so we will now click on install. After which we'll again apply some sorcery to advance forward in time. And there we are. The installer has finished. So let's restart now. log in. And here we are back properly on the Ubuntu 2604 LTS desktop. And we're running here the first run wizard. So let's click on next where we have the option to turn on location services. No thank you. We can share data with the Ubuntu team. I think I will do that to help them out. We can now also personalize our desktop experience. I'll stick with the default for now. And as we'll look at the app center later, I will finally click on finish. However, as always in my DRO reviews, I want to make a few scaling changes. And so we'll now have an inter title.

Greetings. Here I am back again with things scaled to my liking. For full disclosure, I've also reverted to the classic Ubuntu interface font because it's thicker and more readable. And I'll provide notes on how to do this in the video description. So, let's take a look around and whilst doing so highlight what's new. And note, I'll be comparing to the last long-term support release, which was Ubuntu 2404. There have been three sixmonthly interim releases since this came out, but as these have just nine months of support, a lot of users only install the long-term support versions. By default, we have a panel at the top that includes a right-hand menu for things like power mode and also shutting down the system. And indeed, if here we select power off, we see an example of visual changes to the dialogues which now look more modern. Back on the desktop on the left, we have a vertical dock that contains shortcuts to common applications including Libra Office and the files file manager. And if we open this up, we are witness to another new feature, which is that by default, new windows are now placed in the center of the screen, which I really welcome. Here in the file manager, we also see its updated folder icons, which now use the desktop's accent color, which by default is orange, which I personally find a bit intense for the folders, but we will fix this in a second. bottom left there's a control for showing applications not pinned to the dock. And here it's great to see that an Nvidia control application for our GPU is present. This means that the installer clearly did its job and has set up the correct proprietary Nvidia driver for our GT 1030. And this is excellent and an improvement on what happens in many other Linux distros. And it's also worth noting that CUDO installation has been massively improved and simplified in this latest version of Ubuntu. Under the hood, Ubuntu 2604 is based on Linux kernel 7. 0, which was only released on April the 12th, 2026. So Ubuntu 2604 is based on the very latest Linux technology and drivers. However, the option to choose an exorg or x11 desktop session has been dropped with only wayand being supported. A key reason for this is that the desktop here in Ubuntu 2604 is a customized version of Gnome 50 upgraded from version 46 in Ubuntu 2404 and Gnome 50 is way only but it also provides many improvements. For example, fractional scaling factors have been optimized to stop text looking blurred which is clearly very important indeed. However, fractional scaling is now also less important as if we go to settings. Here we go. And we go down to accessibility down there, we discover that under seeing, whilst initially it looks like we have the same options we had in previous versions of Ubuntu. And indeed, as we saw as the installer, if we click on text size large, it actually takes us not to a toggle for normal or larger text, but to a slider. We've finally got full control of the size of the text, which is very good and I know will be extremely useful for some users. Here in settings, we've also got lots of other controls as you would expect. We can control, for example, appearance where I think we will select a dark theme because oh, it looks very exciting. And we can also here control the accent color I was talking about earlier. So, let's move this window over there. Bring up our file manager from earlier with its bright orange on it. and uh go back over here and just maybe pick the one on the end there. I think that's a bit better. I think the orange was a little bit too intense. And so we'll go with that sort of thorny color for the uh the folder color here and also bottom left on the desktop. Although personally I always use the file manager with a list view. Changes we cannot see include improved power optimization, especially on AMD hardware. And gamers will be pleased that in addition to general performance improvements, there's the potential for Windows games to run better under Wine, which includes gaming in Steam Play using Proton. And this is because there's a new NTSC driver that emulates with NTSync primitives. Less welcome for some users is that an application called Pipewire is now distributed as a snap package. Pipewire is Ubuntu's audio subsystem and also handles video streams for things like screen recording. And I'll say more about this and the use of snap packages more generally in Ubuntu later in the video.

If you opt for an extended selection install, Ubuntu 2604 includes a lot of useful applications including the Firefox web browser, the Thunderbird email client, and Libra Office. There are also lots of utilities. However, since Ubuntu 2404, quite a few of these have changed. And one of the reasons has been to improve security by rewriting some programs in Rust, which is a memory safe programming language. As a result, the included PDF viewer is now called Papers. Here it is, and it seems to work absolutely fine. The included video player is now called Showtime. And again, works absolutely fine. Well, it works absolutely fine except it's got rounded corners if it's not maximized. I guess we have to forgive it that. And then finally, the included image viewer is called Lupe and again works absolutely fine. We also have a new terminal emulator which has got an improved user interface. This is rather nice. I've increased the size of the font here so we can see it more easily. And when working in the terminal, sudo or super user do functionality is now provided by a tool called sudo rs. To access this, we still type sudo like that. And let's try it out with an apt update. And if I press enter, it asks for my password. So I'll type it in. And oh look, they've turned on password feedback. We can see asterisk showing the length of characters of the password, which I know for some people will be controversial. And I don't think this will update anyway because I think it's well up to date. Is it? It is. But I just thought you might like to take a look. Meanwhile, we've also got another new system application which is called resources. And this is replaced for system monitor. Here it is showing us what's going on the system. Let's take a look at memory because we were looking at memory earlier and seeing how much is being used. Let's close down the document view. I might be using a bit of memory. How much memory are we using with nothing running other than the resources thing? About what? 2. 3 GB on this 16 GB system. So thinking back to the memory requirement of 6 GB, I still think you could run a Buntu 2604 in less than 6 GB on your computer. Finally, let's take a look at the new security center. Here it is. And Ubuntu 2604 has a lot of security improvements, many of which are technical. And I'll provide a link in the video description for those who want the detail. But here in my new security center app, we can control a new Bluetooth pro subscription. For some reason here, it says we can't have one here because it requires an LTS release, which does confuse me because if we look in settings, it made me think this. We look at about, we're definitely running a Buntu 2604 LTS. So, I don't know what's going on here in the security center. It is new. Maybe it's got teething issues. And we can also here control app permissions. This is where you allow certain applications to access things like your camera, microphone, etc. Currently experimental, but good to see this being developed. And also here we can inspect and manage disk encryption if it was set up during installation, which of course we did not do. However, I do find it surprising that the security center does not currently include an interface through Buntu's firewall, which is still turned off by default and can only be graphically controlled if you install a GUI. So, let's do that. Let's go to the uh app center down there and we will search for GUFW, which is the graphical interface for the uncomplicated firewall. Let's click on it there. There it is. And we will install. Enter our password of course. And there we are. It is installed. And hopefully will have appeared here under apps. It has. We can now turn on the firewall if we wish. And if you want to know more, I've got a dedicated video on desktop Linux security.

Back in Ubuntu 2404 and previously we had the app center for installing applications as well as software and updates and the software updator. But here in Ubuntu 2604, whilst we still have the app center and software updator, the software and updates app has been removed. And so there are currently no straightforward controls here in Ubuntu 604 for changing update settings or checking and installing proprietary drivers in time. I guess these may be included elsewhere, potentially in the app center, maybe under manage. They could be here. They certainly aren't here right now. And I really think that new controls should have been added before the old ones were taken out. Software and updates was apparently removed because it confused some users and certainly having three simil applications was confusing. If you update from a previous version of Ubuntu, the software and updates app will not be removed. And you can get it back here in iuntu 2604 by opening the terminal and entering this command. Now, we've already noted that the installer sorted out our proprietary Nvidia GPU driver just fine. And so here, the software and updates app was not really needed. But I personally do like to have control of drivers and updates. And so it's now not ideal that after a clean install of Ubuntu, I need to do two fixes. One to restore the interface font and the other to get back driver and update control. This said, these fixes are rapid and possible. So we've still got far more user control than in Windows.

Like many people, I find Ubuntu to be very solid and professional. I run it on the Cyber Deck sitting in front of me right now, as well as on many test systems. And in October 2026, when consumer ESUs for Windows 10 come to an end, I expect to install Ubuntu 2604 on my laptop. However, in the Linux community, there are quite a few Ubuntu haters. And rather than letting that issue just fester in the comments, I thought I'd address two common criticisms head on. Firstly, whilst Ubuntu is free to download and entirely open source, it's published by a commercial company called Canonicle. As explained on the website, members of the Canonicle team lead aspects of Ubuntu. Nevertheless, it remains a key tenant of the Ubuntu project, but Ubuntu is a shared work between Canonicle, other companies, and thousands of volunteers. Canonicle funds Ubuntu by selling support and services to large-scale commercial users. And this inevitably means that Ubuntu is a bit different to Linux distros that do not involve a commercial organization. How important this is fundamentally comes down to why you run Linux. For some people, the primary reason to use Linux is to run free and open-source software or FOS. And because Ubuntu is published by a commercial organization, it seemed to be tainted and is subsequently criticized. However, for other people, myself included, the primary reason to use Linux is to run a desktop operating system that gives the user control and which does not require enslavement to a big tech ecosystem. And a lot of people in this second camp like and respect Ubuntu as a free operating system with a strong focus on usability and the backing of a company with over a thousand employees. A second common criticism of Ubuntu is its use of an application packaging system called snap. This is the default means of installing applications in Ubuntu. And as noted earlier in Ubuntu 2604, the audio subsystem which is called pipewire is distributed as a snap package. And so it's very difficult to get rid of snaps in Ubuntu 2604 at least if you want functioning audio. Snap was created by Canonolle themselves as a consistent means of application delivery and removal with no dependency problems. And whilst there have been some performance issues, the fundamental argument against Snap is that its default app store is run by Canonicle themselves rather than by a broader distributed community. And so snaps, Ubuntu's use of snaps and canonicals control of snaps is argued by some members of the pure FOS community to be a very bad thing indeed. However, whether it is or not again depends on why you choose to run Linux. And whilst I strongly respect those people who do so because they want to use as much pure foss as possible, if you're a member of our second Linux user group, I would encourage you to ignore a lot of the criticism that's now held to Ubuntu because it's largely made on a philosophical rather than a technical or performance basis.

Ubuntu 2604 is a solid update to a professional and very dependable Linux distribution. And if you're thinking of migrating from Windows to Linux, it's certainly worth considering. But now that's it for another video. If you've enjoyed what you've seen here, please press that like button. If you haven't subscribed, please subscribe. And I hope to talk to you again very soon.