Ubuntu maker Canonical announced today the general availability of Ubuntu Desktop images for the RISC-V architecture, along with unofficial and unsupported Xubuntu Minimal images for RISC-V.
As I reported back in June, when the first daily build images for Ubuntu 26.10 were made available to download, there was a new RISC-V desktop image available too, but now Canonical is making everything official: Ubuntu 26.10 (Stonking Stingray) brings desktop images to RISC-V computers.
That’s right, if you have a RISC-V computer and want to use Ubuntu on it, you will be able to do so with the upcoming Ubuntu 26.10 release, due out next week on October 15th, 2026. Even better, it looks like there will also be a RISC-V image for the Xubuntu flavor featuring the lightweight Xfce desktop environment.
“The Xubuntu variant exists for a practical reason: the Xfce-based minimal image is far more manageable under emulation,” said Canonical. “The images are experimental: they carry no official support yet, and there are still known issues that we are addressing for the release. Bug reports on Launchpad are very welcome.”
Canonical recommends testing the Ubuntu Desktop RISC-V images on SpacemiT K3 hardware since official support for this platform is coming with Ubuntu 26.10, and they even have a guide on how to install Ubuntu on the SpacemiT K3 Pico-ITX. On the other hand, the Xubuntu Minimal images are recommended for testing in virtual machines.
Testing the Ubuntu 26.10 RISC-V desktop images will require you to copy your own first-stage bootloader, such as U-boot, as well as the relevant Device Tree Blobs (DTBs), onto the ISO before booting it on real hardware like the SiFive HiFive Unmatched, which is supported by Canonical.
Canonical promises to deliver a complete desktop experience on RISC-V computers with the Stonking Stingray release, especially on RVA23-compliant hardware like Milk-V Jupiter 2 Mini-ITX, DeepComputing DC-ROMA, and SpacemiT K3 Pico-ITX.
Ubuntu 26.10 is expected to ship with the upcoming GNOME 51 desktop environment by default, which will be released on September 16th, 2026, and the soon-to-be-released Linux 7.3 kernel series, which should be out later this month. I’m hoping that more Ubuntu flavors will pick up RISC-V support in the long run.
Without further ado, you can download the latest Ubuntu 26.10 RISC-V desktop images from here and the Xubuntu Minimal RISC-V image from here. Once again, please keep in mind that these images are considered experimental, so don’t use them for any production work.