Canonical Streamlines RISC-V Hardware Adoption with Official Ubuntu 26.10 Desktop Images

Installing the Ubuntu desktop operating system on RISC-V hardware is becoming significantly more streamlined with the upcoming 26.10 release, as Canonical is now officially building standard riscv64 desktop installation images. This development marks a substantial step forward for the open-source hardware architecture, lowering the barrier to entry for developers, enthusiasts, and hardware manufacturers alike who want to experience a complete, out-of-the-box graphical desktop environment on modern 64-bit RISC-V systems.

As part of this rollout, experimental versions of the upcoming Ubuntu 26.10 release are currently available for public testing specifically tailored for the SpacemiT K3 development board—a piece of hardware that Canonical has been actively collaborating on with SpacemiT. To accommodate different testing needs and hardware constraints, Canonical is providing two distinct ISO variants. One image ships with the standard GNOME desktop environment, which serves as the flagship graphical experience for Ubuntu, while the second image is built around a minimal Xubuntu configuration, utilizing the lighter Xfce desktop environment.

Valentin Haudiquet of Canonical has noted that both of these newly introduced ISOs are strictly designated as "experimental" and currently "carry no official support." Because they are still undergoing active development and testing, users should expect that they will not work flawlessly right away. The experimental builds contain various minor issues and rough edges that are scheduled to be addressed, polished, and resolved ahead of the final, stable release of Ubuntu 26.10, which is officially slated to arrive on October 15, 2026.

Why are there two images?

The decision to provide two separate desktop image variants stems from the current landscape of RISC-V hardware and development workflows. RISC-V hardware that meets the stringent RVA23 baseline specification is still relatively new to the broader market. Consequently, many software developers and engineers who want to experiment with, test, and develop for the RISC-V architecture do not yet have physical access to high-end native hardware. Instead, they rely heavily on emulation tools like QEMU.

When running within an emulator like QEMU, resource-intensive graphical environments can place heavy demands on host systems, where loading the full GNOME desktop can sometimes take up to thirty minutes. To solve this bottleneck and provide a much more agile testing experience, the lighter Xubuntu minimal image offers a quicker, more responsive alternative that consumes fewer system resources during emulation.

On real physical hardware, however, the GNOME image is reported to deliver a remarkably nice and performant desktop experience. Given the recent, rapid jumps in RISC-V hardware capabilities and performance, this is an encouraging sign for the long-term viability of the architecture as a daily-driving desktop platform.

Reaching this milestone required substantial foundational engineering across various layers of the Ubuntu ecosystem. Much of this groundwork involved Canonical’s ongoing efforts to add robust RISC-V support to Flutter, a cross-platform application framework. This was a critical prerequisite because a wide array of modern Ubuntu applications—including the core operating system installer itself—rely heavily on Flutter. Despite these advances, a few desktop snaps are not yet fully RISC-V ready, most notably the App Center, which continues to undergo adaptation for the architecture.

Additionally, underlying infrastructure changes were necessary to bring these images to life. Modifications to livecd-rootfs were required to properly handle device trees, and Ubuntu’s automated build pipeline had to be significantly upgraded and reconfigured to successfully generate the brand-new riscv64 ISO files on demand.

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

The introduction of official desktop installation images does not mean Ubuntu has never run on RISC-V before. Server-focused installation images for the architecture have been publicly available for several years, and technically inclined users could install a graphical desktop environment on top of those server builds manually. This capability existed long before Canonical officially raised the Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) profile to RVA23, a decision made to focus exclusively on newer, more performant boards and ensure a higher baseline of capability.

However, prior to this announcement, official installation images with a complete desktop environment preinstalled were never directly provided by Canonical. In the past, hardware companies that partnered closely with Canonical to establish Ubuntu RISC-V support—many of which have successfully manufactured and sold RISC-V tablets, laptops, and single-board computers running Ubuntu—were forced to build, maintain, and host their own proprietary recovery images and custom installers.

The introduction of official desktop images completely resolves this fragmentation. Developers and consumers alike can now download official desktop images tailored for modern 64-bit RISC-V hardware that meets the RVA23 profile, directly from the exact same centralized repositories used for traditional Intel, AMD, and Arm64 architectures.

For users who prefer the stability of a Long Term Support release, an Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS riscv64 desktop ISO is also available, although it currently lacks direct support for the SpacemiT K3 board. According to Haudiquet, support for the K3 board on the LTS branch is coming soon.

Those wishing to test the new capabilities can download the experimental Ubuntu 26.10 desktop RISC-V image directly from the daily builds section on the official Canonical CD image server, while the corresponding Xubuntu 26.10 RISC-V image can be found within the Xubuntu daily minimal builds directory.