Ubuntu 26.04 New Features – What Changed in Resolute Raccoon

The Activities overview has been redesigned with a cleaner grid layout. Open windows and workspaces are easier to distinguish at a glance. The animation when opening and closing Activities is faster and less distracting.

Multi-monitor setups behave more predictably in GNOME 50. Each display now has its own independent workspace strip. Moving windows between screens is smoother, and hotplug behavior when connecting or disconnecting a monitor has been significantly improved.

Fractional scaling (125%, 150%, 175%) is now enabled and stable by default. On high-DPI displays this removes the blurry text that affected older Ubuntu releases. Previously fractional scaling required enabling an experimental flag in GNOME Tweaks.

Variable refresh rate support is enabled by default for displays that support it. This reduces screen tearing and produces smoother visuals when the frame rate fluctuates – most noticeably in games and video playback on compatible monitors.

Keyboard navigation across the shell has been expanded. More panels and system dialogs can be navigated without a mouse. Focus indicators are more visible, which also helps accessibility.

The notification system in GNOME 50 groups repeated notifications from the same app more aggressively, reducing clutter in the notification tray. Persistent notifications now display more detail inline before you need to expand them.

The installer now includes a TPM-backed encryption option on the disk setup screen. On supported hardware, the encryption keys are stored in your computer’s security chip (TPM) and unlocked automatically at startup – no passphrase to type each time. A recovery key is shown at the end of installation so you can still access your data if something goes wrong. No manual setup or terminal commands needed.

The old “Minimal vs Normal” install choice is gone. It has been replaced with “Default selection” and “Extended selection.” Default includes Firefox, LibreOffice core, Thunderbird, and the standard GNOME apps – enough for most people right away. Extended adds more media tools, additional fonts, and extra office apps. You can add anything you want later using the terminal or the App Center.

A Snap is a self-contained app package. It runs in a sandboxed area separate from the rest of your system. Firefox as a Snap opens and runs exactly like a normal browser. The main differences are that it takes slightly longer to launch on the first open after a reboot, and it updates on Canonical’s schedule rather than Firefox’s own release timing.

You can replace the Snap version with a standard deb package using Mozilla’s official APT repository. This gives you Firefox from Mozilla directly, updated on Mozilla’s own schedule. The process requires a few terminal commands. Search “install firefox deb ubuntu 26.04” for a current step-by-step guide – several well-maintained ones exist.