Ubuntu 26.10 "Stonking Stingray" Released with Advanced Window Tiling, Passkey Sign-Ins, and Rust Core Utilities

Canonical has officially released Ubuntu 26.10, codenamed "Stonking Stingray," marking the arrival of the latest short-term interim release of the popular Linux distribution. Supported for the next nine months until July 2027, this new version introduces several significant under-the-hood upgrades and user-facing features, ranging from an intuitive drag-up layout picker for window tiling to full-disk encryption expansions, biometric and passkey authentication at the login screen, and the total completion of its migration to Rust-based core utilities.

At the core of the operating system are updated upstream components. Ubuntu 26.10 ships with GNOME 51, Mesa 26.2 for enhanced open-source graphics performance, and the Linux 7.3 kernel. Users will also find a more capable App Center featuring integrated driver management, expanded desktop ISOs tailored for emerging RISC-V hardware, and broader hardware enablement that bridges performance and security across both consumer and enterprise environments.

One of the most immediate visual and functional changes in Ubuntu 26.10 is a faster, more streamlined approach to window tiling. When users begin dragging a window across the desktop, a layout picker now gracefully peeks in from the top of the screen. Dragging the window upward into this zone reveals available tiling layouts, complete with a real-time ghost preview that shows precisely where the window will snap upon release. For power users who prefer a traditional window management workflow, Canonical has ensured the feature can be toggled off via terminal configuration settings.

Desktop organization and file management have also received considerable attention. Nautilus, the default file manager, now incorporates a real-time file counter badge that displays the exact number of items being dragged into a new folder or external drive, providing instant confirmation during multi-file operations. Additionally, backend optimizations allow files within large directories to load much faster during refreshes. At smaller window widths, a new tab overview button simplifies the process of viewing and switching between active tabs, a benefit particularly noticeable on multi-window and tiled layouts.

The default desktop icons extension, DING, has been successfully ported to GTK4, aligning the visual style of its context menus and dialog boxes with the rest of the modern GNOME desktop. Clipboard checks within DING now execute asynchronously, removing the slight pause that previously occurred when opening the desktop right-click menu. Furthermore, the system settings panel has been expanded to include a wider array of hardware toggles, including an option to automatically disable the touchpad when an external mouse is connected, finer-tuned display auto-rotation controls for touchscreens, and consolidated system information panels.

Security and enterprise authentication represent a major focal point for the Ubuntu 26.10 release. The GDM login and lock screens now feature native support for FIDO2 passkeys and web-based sign-in workflows. For organizations utilizing Microsoft ecosystems, the introduction of a unified authentication framework allows employees and students to sign in using their Microsoft Entra ID password, subsequently approving multi-factor authentication prompts via Microsoft Authenticator or a one-time code across the desktop, terminal, and SSH sessions.

Additionally, TPM-backed full-disk encryption has been expanded to reach a wider array of machines, including devices that lack a traditional hardware root of trust, provided users configure a PIN or passphrase during the initial installation process.

Software management through the App Center has been significantly streamlined. A newly introduced Add-ons section consolidates auxiliary requirements by housing Additional Drivers—such as proprietary software for NVIDIA graphics cards—and Media Support packages for essential audio and video codecs within a single interface. The App Center also improves its handling of dual-format applications, offering unified detail pages that clearly differentiate between Snap and Debian packages by displaying download sizes, publisher information, permissions, and version numbers. Furthermore, third-party Deb installations are now more flexible, permitting users to install newer builds directly over previously installed applications.

Under the hood, Ubuntu 26.10 represents a major milestone for the distribution’s systems architecture. The long-term migration of core system utilities to Rust is now officially complete, with critical commands such as cp, mv, and rm running entirely on uutils. Further down the software stack, the dbus-daemon has been officially replaced by dbus-broker after more than two decades of service, enhancing the reliability and security of inter-process communication across desktop applications and system services.

Graphics and hardware support are bolstered by the inclusion of Mesa 26.2, which introduces mesh shader support to the open-source NVK Vulkan driver for NVIDIA hardware alongside low-latency Vulkan Video encoding and decoding capabilities for AMD GPUs. NVIDIA’s 615 driver series now replaces older iterations, delivering open kernel modules tailored for Turing and newer architectures. Meanwhile, the inclusion of the Linux 7.3 kernel release candidate brings early support for next-generation ARM-based machines, improved memory management for lower-end graphics cards, and enhanced EXT4 multi-block allocation performance.

For developers and advanced users, the release provides updated toolchains including OpenJDK 25, .NET 10, Python 3.14.7, LLVM 22.1.8, and Rust 1.97. Alongside standard Intel and AMD desktop images, Canonical has introduced a dedicated amd64v3 ISO optimized for modern x86-64 processors, as well as an official experimental desktop image for modern RISC-V development boards.

Ubuntu 26.10 is available for download directly from the official Ubuntu website and release servers. Existing users running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS can upgrade directly by adjusting their release upgrade preferences, ensuring continuity for applications, files, and personal configurations as the platform enters its next phase of development.