Edubuntu 26.04 LTS Beta Released
The Edubuntu Council (@amypenguin and @eeickmeyer) is pleased to announce Edubuntu 26.04 LTS Beta, codenamed “Resolute Raccoon”. While it is free of any showstopper installer bugs and is representative of what will be the final release, bugs will be found within.
As a Long-Term Support (LTS) release, Edubuntu 26.04 will be supported for 3 years until April 2029. We encourage everyone to try this image and report bugs to improve our final release.
Desktop (amd64) and Raspberry Pi 5 (arm64+raspi) images may be downloaded from https://cdimages.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/26.04/beta.
New Features
- This release includes GNOME 50.
- Edubuntu Installer completely rewritten from the ground up in Python with dual GTK4 and Qt6 UI backends. The application automatically detects your desktop environment and launches the appropriate interface. It also includes a new Cockpit module for web-based remote administration of Edubuntu’s age-group configuration. Translations are available for 21 languages including Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Czech, Estonian, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Turkish, and Ukrainian.
- Edubuntu Menu Administration rewritten in Python with the same dual GTK4/Qt6 backend approach as Installer, including translations, Cockpit module, and the ability to disable the terminal keyboard shortcut for non-admin users.
- Installer slideshow translations — the Ubuntu Desktop installer (Subiquity) slideshow is now localized in 21 languages.
- New wallpapers for the Resolute Raccoon cycle featuring education-themed photography.
- New default accent color: the default GNOME accent color has been switched to teal (Yaru-prussiangreen) for a refreshed look, matching our new default wallpaper..
- Plymouth spinner updated to use symlinks for consistency.
- Foliate, a modern GTK4 e-book reader, is now included alongside Calibre.
- Paperboy, a GTK4/Libadwaita news reader application, is now included for secondary (Middle/High School) and tertiary (College/University) education.
- GNOME Showtime replaces Totem as the default video player.
- Arduino IDE and Raspberry Pi Imager are now included for secondary and tertiary education users.
- GChemPaint, a 2D chemical structure editor, is now included for secondary and tertiary education.
- GNOME Notes (Bijiben) returns, replacing Gnote as the default note-taking application.
- Alphabetical App Grid GNOME Shell extension updated to version 44.0 with support for GNOME 50.
- Several GTK 2 packages removed, including chemtool, as GTK 2 is no longer supported in upstream Debian.
- Artha (offline thesaurus) has been removed as it is no longer maintained. We encourage online sources
Known Issues
- The Raspberry Pi 5 needs a newer EEPROM/bootloader version than the one released 23 SEP 2024 to boot this release. The earliest release required is 11 FEB 2025. Unless you have this or later, you will be unable to boot the image, and unable to upgrade as upgrades will be blocked for your installation’s safety.
- The Ubuntu welcome app branding does not match Edubuntu. We’re working on ways to resolve this.
- As Edubuntu shares a desktop with and is based on Ubuntu Desktop, any known issues can be found in the official Ubuntu Release Notes.
- Individual applications included with Edubuntu may have their own known issues. Please consult upstream release notes for those applications before filing bug reports.