Ubuntu 26.04 LTS “Resolute Raccoon” now available on AWS: Secure, AI-ready, and built for scale

Project Discussion Ubuntu on AWS
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We are excited to announce the release of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Resolute Raccoon on AWS. This long-term support release is available via AWS EC2 public images in standard Server and Minimal variants, alongside their respective Pro counterparts. Support for EKS will follow shortly.

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS ships with Linux Kernel 7.0 and includes significant runtime updates. It builds on the resilience improvements introduced in recent interim releases, with features such as TPM-backed full disk encryption, enhanced application permission prompting, Livepatch support for Arm-based servers (Graviton), and Rust-based utilities for improved memory safety. With native support for NVIDIA CUDA and AMD ROCm, Resolute Raccoon provides a robust, production-ready foundation for modern AI and machine learning workloads.

Important changes

1. Updated microarchitecture level on AMD64

Starting with this release, AMD64 images are now built with AMD64v3 by default. This change will continue in future releases enabling performance improvements by leveraging modern CPU features.

Note on previous-generation instance types support: This shift impacts several previous-generation instance families. While AWS continues to support these for legacy workloads, they do not meet the microarchitecture requirements for Ubuntu 26.04 (equivalent to Intel Haswell or AMD Excavator and newer). The following families are no longer supported:

  • General Purpose: M1, M2, M3, M4
  • Compute Optimized: C1, C3, C4
  • Memory Optimized: R3, R4
  • Storage & Accelerated: I2, G3, P2, P3, P3dn

Refer to AWS Previous Generation Instances documentation to identify migration paths to current generation instances.

2. Security and identity

  • authd framework: Seamlessly integrates with cloud identity providers via OpenID Connect (OIDC) including EntraID and others. This enables alignment of server login access with enterprise identity platforms, including support for multi-factor authentication and conditional access.

  • TPM-backed full disk encryption: Native support for TPM-backed FDE supporting AWS NitroTPMs, enabling a hardware-attested chain of trust from firmware to the operating system.

  • Post-quantum cryptography: OpenSSH now defaults to a hybrid post-quantum key exchange (mlkem768x25519-sha256), helping mitigate “harvest now, decrypt later” risks.

3. Kernel and server software

  • Linux Kernel 7.0: Optimized for high-density cloud workloads.
  • Real-time kernel: Previously exclusive to Ubuntu Pro, the real-time kernel is now available in the Main repository for free access.
  • Kernel Livepatch on Graviton: Ubuntu Pro users on Graviton can now apply live kernel patching for critical vulnerabilities without unplanned downtime.
  • Default time synchronization: Chrony replaces systemd-timesyncd as the default time daemon, improving precision for distributed systems, databases, and logging.

Other relevant updates:

  • Runtimes and web servers:
    • Apache: 2.4.66
    • Nginx: 1.28.3
    • Django: 5.2
    • PHP 8.5
    • NodeJS: 22.22.1
    • Python 3.14
    • OpenJDK 25 (TCK certified)
    • Rust: 1.93, while 1.91 and 1.92 are also available
    • Zig is now available in Ubuntu, with version 0.14.1
    • Go: 1.26
  • Databases:
    • PostgreSQL 18
    • MySQL 8.4 LTS
    • Valkey 9.0.3
    • DocumentDB is now available starting with version 0.108-0

How to get Ubuntu 26.04 on AWS

Ubuntu 26.04 Resolute Raccoon is available now on EC2.

You can launch it using the Quick Launch menu on the EC2 console or the AWS CLI.

EC2 Console

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AWS CLI

You can retrieve the latest Amazon Machine Image (AMI) using the AWS CLI either in your local machine or in the AWS cloud shell.

For AMD64 instances:

aws ssm get-parameters --names /aws/service/canonical/ubuntu/server/resolute/stable/current/amd64/hvm/ebs-gp3/ami-id

For Graviton instances:

aws ssm get-parameters --names /aws/service/canonical/ubuntu/server/resolute/stable/current/arm64/hvm/ebs-gp3/ami-id

For Ubuntu Pro images, the process is similar.

AMD64:

aws ssm get-parameters --names /aws/service/canonical/ubuntu/pro-server/resolute/stable/current/amd64/hvm/ebs-gp3/ami-id

Graviton:

aws ssm get-parameters --names /aws/service/canonical/ubuntu/pro-server/resolute/stable/current/arm64/hvm/ebs-gp3/ami-id

More information about finding images via the CLI is available in the official documentation:
https://documentation.ubuntu.com/aws/aws-how-to/instances/find-ubuntu-images/

AWS Marketplace

Update: Now also available on AWS Marketplace

More information

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