Canonical Releases Official RISC-V Desktop Images Starting with Ubuntu 26.10

Installing the Ubuntu desktop on RISC-V hardware has just become significantly easier, as Canonical is now building official riscv64 desktop images starting with the upcoming 26.10 release. This development marks a major milestone for the open-source hardware architecture, bridging the gap between server-side deployments and user-facing desktop environments.

Experimental versions of the upcoming Ubuntu 26.10 release are currently out for testing specifically on the SpacemiT K3, a development board that Canonical has been actively collaborating on with SpacemiT. To accommodate different testing needs and hardware constraints, two distinct ISO images are being provided for evaluation. One of these ISOs ships the standard GNOME desktop environment, providing a feature-complete and modern user interface, while the other is built around a minimal Xubuntu setup, offering a lightweight alternative tailored for speed and efficiency.

Canonical’s Valentin Haudiquet has noted that both of these newly introduced ISOs are strictly experimental and currently carry no official support. Because they are early-stage builds, they will not work flawlessly and do contain several known issues that are expected to be addressed and resolved in time for the final, stable version that arrives on October 15, 2026.

Why are there two images?

The availability of two distinct images stems from the current landscape of RISC-V development. RISC-V hardware that meets the stringent RVA23 baseline is still relatively new to the market. Consequently, many software developers and enthusiasts who want to test and develop for the RISC-V architecture lack physical hardware and instead rely on emulation tools like QEMU. Within an emulated environment, running a resource-heavy desktop environment like GNOME can be sluggish, taking up to 30 minutes just to load. This created an operational need for a lighter, quicker option, which the minimal Xubuntu build helps fulfill.

Conversely, on real, physical hardware, the GNOME image is reported to provide a remarkably performant and polished desktop experience. Given the recent, rapid jumps in RISC-V hardware capabilities and processing performance, this feedback is an encouraging sign for the future viability of the architecture on desktop machines.

Reaching this stage has required extensive foundational engineering across the Ubuntu ecosystem. Canonical’s ongoing work to add robust RISC-V support to Flutter was a crucial part of the effort required to get here. Many core Ubuntu applications—including the operating system’s graphical installer—rely heavily on Flutter frameworks. However, work remains ongoing, as a few desktop snaps are not yet fully RISC-V ready, including the central App Center application.

Behind the scenes, engineers also had to implement necessary changes to livecd-rootfs to properly handle device trees. Additionally, Ubuntu’s broader automated build pipeline had to be upgraded and reconfigured to successfully generate these entirely new riscv64 ISO images at scale.

But weren’t RISC-V tablets sold with Ubuntu on?

This is not the first time Ubuntu has offered installation pathways for the RISC-V architecture. Server images have been available and actively maintained for years, and advanced users could technically install a graphical desktop environment on top of those server builds. This long-standing capability predates Canonical’s decision to formally raise the ISA profile requirements to RVA23, a move designed to exclusively support newer, highly performant boards capable of running modern workloads effectively.

However, despite these underlying capabilities, official installation images with a complete desktop environment preinstalled were never previously provided directly by Canonical.

Hardware companies that have previously partnered with Canonical on Ubuntu RISC-V support—many of which have successfully manufactured and sold RISC-V tablets, laptops, and single-board computers with Ubuntu preinstalled—have traditionally been forced to build, maintain, and host their own custom recovery and installation images.

The introduction of official desktop images resolves this fragmentation. Developers and hardware manufacturers will now have access to official desktop images tailored for modern 64-bit RISC-V hardware complying with the RVA23 profile and above. These images will be made available to download directly from the exact same infrastructure used for mainstream Intel, AMD, and Arm64 distributions.

For users who prefer long-term stability over bleeding-edge releases, an Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS riscv64 desktop ISO has also been made available. While this LTS build currently lacks immediate support for the SpacemiT K3 board, Valentin Haudiquet has indicated that support for it will be arriving soon.

Developers and testers interested in evaluating the new builds can download the test image of the Ubuntu 26.10 desktop for RISC-V directly from the daily builds folder on the official Canonical CD image repository. Meanwhile, the corresponding Xubuntu 26.10 RISC-V image can be found and downloaded from the Xubuntu daily minimal builds folder.