Kubuntu is one of the longest-running Ubuntu flavors and also one of the more sensible ones to recommend.It ships the KDE Plasma desktop on top of an Ubuntu base and is maintained by a volunteer team that tracks the KDE release cycle closely and works to get the latest Plasma builds into each release.If you want the KDE experience without leaving the Ubuntu ecosystem, Kubuntu is the cleanest way to get there. Anyhow, with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS officially out, Kubuntu 26.04 LTS is also here alongside it, and here's what this release has to offer.Kubuntu 26.04 LTS: What's Fresh?Same as its Ubuntu base, this Kubuntu release is powered by Linux kernel 7.0, which comes in as a notable hardware support and storage upgrade over the kernel that shipped with Kubuntu 24.04 LTS.Intel Arc users get considerably more detailed temperature data through the hardware monitoring interface, now covering memory controller, PCIe, and individual VRAM channel readings rather than just a single GPU core temperature.XFS picks up an autonomous self-healing daemon that watches for metadata failures and I/O errors in real time and kicks off repairs without taking the filesystem offline. Rust support also officially moves from experimental to stable in this kernel.For the desktop environment, Plasma 6.6 is included, which offers many improvements.You get OCR functionality in Spectacle, the screenshot tool, Plasma Setup, a first-run wizard that handles user account creation, and virtual desktops can now be set to appear only on your primary screen.Then there's the removal of the X11 session, which is not installed by default and will not be supported by the Kubuntu team going forward. Wayland is now the only officially supported session, and the plasma-session-x11 package remains available in the Ubuntu archive for anyone who needs it.A few other changes from the Ubuntu base that are also worth knowing about. sudo-rs, the Rust rewrite of the classic sudo tool, is now the default sudo provider in this release.The NTSYNC kernel driver is included too. It handles WinNT sync primitive emulation at the kernel level rather than pushing that work into user space, which improves performance for Windows games running through Wine or Proton.NVIDIA laptop users get Dynamic Boost enabled by default, which shifts power automatically between the CPU and GPU based on what the workload demands.You also get a set of updated applications and tooling:APT 3.2Qt 6.10.2Firefox 149 (Snap)LibreOffice 26.2.2KDE Frameworks 6.24.0KDE Applications 25.12.3📥 Get Kubuntu 26.04 LTSYou will find this Kubuntu LTS release on the official website and on the Ubuntu release portal. Existing users can follow the upgrade guide for 24.04 to get the release.Kubuntu 26.04 LTSIf you face any issues, you can ask for help in our forum or the Kubuntu forum.