On October 9, Canonical announced experimental Ubuntu Desktop and Xubuntu Minimal images for riscv64 that users could test. It expected official Ubuntu Desktop images with Ubuntu 26.10 on October 15, 2026. Canonical described the test builds as experimental, without official support and with known issues. Canonical’s announcement
NeoTeo previously covered the Ubuntu 26.10 beta and its Linux 7.3 release-candidate kernel; Canonical’s RISC-V announcement concerns a separate part of the release.
Canonical’s two experimental desktop builds
The test options were Ubuntu Desktop and Xubuntu Minimal for riscv64. Canonical described Xubuntu Minimal as unofficial and unsupported, and said initial images might lack the App Center, Prompting Client and other desktop snaps.
Emulation and real hardware need different preparation
For emulation, Canonical said Xubuntu Minimal is more manageable than GNOME. It noted that GNOME could take more than 30 minutes to load under QEMU—an emulation example, not a general performance measure. For RVA23 emulation, Canonical specified recent QEMU on a host running Ubuntu 25.10 or later.
Booting on real RISC-V hardware involves a different step: Canonical’s Ubuntu 26.10 image listing says to copy a first-stage bootloader, such as U-Boot, and the relevant device-tree blobs onto the image.
Canonical names SpacemiT K3 Pico-ITX for support
Canonical’s planned official support specifically names the SpacemiT K3 Pico-ITX. Before installing official Ubuntu images on K3 hardware, Canonical’s installation guide calls for a firmware update; it describes the firmware-flashing script as experimental.
