Updated: July 15, 2026
Here's a somewhat sad philosophical question: how long does it take for Ubuntu-based LTS to truly become LTS stable? Apparently, the answer is about two years. So far, if you've followed my diatribes on Linux, Kubuntu 24.04 has not been the most exemplary of LTS editions. Even my fourth attempt showed all sorts of issues and problems and snags, making me feel rather hesitant to upgrade yet more systems. Wait, it was my fifth attempt, yeah. So there.
But then, Kubuntu 26.04 got released. I actually liked it quite some. In fact, I liked it so much that I've decided to upgrade the system on my ancient 12-year-old Lenovo Y50-70, a really curious beast of a machine. That laptop still has respectable specs by today's standards, including an i7 processor, hybrid Nvidia graphics, 4K display, and recently, I swapped the original mechanical disk for an SSD, which brought about an excellent breath of fresh, minty air. Before I do this upgrade, I want to "explore" Kubuntu 24.04 one last time. Let's see what happens.
Upgrade, fifteen minutes and no trouble
I've not used the system in months. I powered it on, and let apt run. It downloaded roughly 2GB worth of upgrades, and together with some snap refreshes (Firefox and Upscayl), a merry 10 minutes later, a single reboot, and no errors whatsoever, my system had been successfully upgraded. Please contrast this with my recent Windows 11 experience, with a somewhat similar in-between-updates timeframe.
The double restart icon issue is still there ...
It gets better and better, really
And I'm not saying this with any amount of sarcasm in me words. The machine works so much better after this latest update. I am very software happy, a rare emotion for Dedoimedo these days. To wit:
- The system received a new Nvidia driver. It's the 580 branch. Not the latest, but definitely not the ancient legacy 470 version. The new driver seems to bring speed improvements, and even the nvidia-smi utility offers more detailed information on what runs and utilizes the card, including say when running Upscayl image resizing. The Prime on-demand switching works great.
- My Kubuntu 24.04 now uses the 6.17 kernel. Additional speed improvements. The responsiveness is better than before the patch. Me likey. In fact, you would be hard pressed to notice any major difference in how this system behaves versus anything far more modern.
- I am using X11, of course, and even with compositing turned on, the speed is solid. Turning it off yields even further speed improvements and joy. Lovely jubbly.
- There were no weird errors, no nonsense. Well, a single warning ... When I updated Firefox, it complained about the Kerberos tickets interface. I guess this is a leftover from an earlier release and whatnot. The browser works correctly, and that interface no longer shows for the snap. Go figure.
snap refresh firefox
INFO snap "firefox" has bad plugs or slots: kerberos-tickets
(unknown interface "kerberos-tickets")
firefox 152.0.1-1 from Mozilla refreshed
WARNING: There is 1 new warning. See 'snap warnings'.
Upgrade to 26.04?
Ah, not yet. I ran the upgrade tool on the command line, and it said there's no LTS version available:
sudo do-release-upgrade --allow-third-party
Checking for a new Ubuntu release
There is no development version of an LTS available.
To upgrade to the latest non-LTS development release
set Prompt=normal in /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades.
I will have to wait a bit longer. But then, now that everything works so nicely, hm ...
Conclusion
Well, really, I think I'm finally pleased with the distro. It's been two years. And now that there's a new LTS available, I kind of feel rather hesitant. I wonder if the kernel will cooperate nicely with the Nvidia drivers, the whole X11-Wayland thingie, and of course, there might be possible upgrade issues. There's a distinct possibility that the experiment might not work, and I will need to reinstall the older LTS from scratch. It will be a bit annoying, to be fair, but then, it should work. After all, 'tis a test machine, so why not.
It's very nice to see a 2014 laptop still coping nicely with modern challenges. Well, reasonable modern challenges. When you look at forced deprecation of hardware for the sake of, well, whatever, it does make you wonder. Also, I look back at this year as Peak Internet. Back then, we had everything we have today minus the modern cancers of social media, extra surveillance and such. Back then, Ubuntu released their best LTS ever, to this day. This machine is more than a relic. It's a living piece of bittersweet nostalgia, the software equivalent of the Portuguese fado. But yeah. Enough rambling from me. Kubuntu 24.04 is finally great. And now I must test fate again. I need to see, most resolutely, if the 26.04 Raccoon is going to cooperate nicely with my system. The hope is high. 'Tis high indeed. Stay tuned.
Cheers.