Ubuntu 26.10 Stonking Stingray ships with a reported pre-release kernel
Ubuntu 26.10 is out with nine months of support, GNOME 51 and Myna, while a report says its Linux 7.3 kernel is still a release candidate.
By Dominic Okoye · Staff Writer
· 3 min read
Ubuntu 26.10 Stonking Stingray was released on Oct. 15 as Canonical’s latest interim Linux distribution, with maintenance updates promised for nine months. The release includes Linux kernel 7.3, GNOME 51 and an opt-in local speech-to-text feature called Myna, but The Register reported that the shipped kernel is 7.3 Release Candidate 7 rather than the finished upstream release.
Ubuntu’s release announcement does not identify the kernel as a release candidate. The Register said Canonical intends to update systems to the completed 7.3 kernel once it is available. That makes the release a less obvious immediate upgrade for users who want to run only a final kernel, though the publication’s advice to wait is its own editorial recommendation, not Canonical guidance.
Stonking Stingray builds on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, according to the Ubuntu Release Team. Unlike an LTS version, however, 26.10 is supported for nine months, so it is aimed at users and teams that want newer platform components and accept a shorter maintenance window.
What is new in Ubuntu 26.10 Stonking Stingray?
Canonical says the release fully adopts Rust-based core utilities, adds post-quantum-ready package signing and expands TPM-backed full-disk encryption. It also adds deeper Microsoft Entra ID authentication integration, including password and multi-factor authentication, along with RISC-V desktop images and optimized amd64v3 installation images.
The company also lists updated developer toolchains and support for accelerated AI workloads, without quantifying performance changes or naming the affected workloads. The desktop release moves to GNOME 51, which Canonical says improves responsiveness, accessibility, usability, software-management consistency and behavior under memory pressure.
For desktop users, the more visible addition may be Myna, described by Ubuntu as an opt-in speech-to-text system that processes speech locally. The Register characterized Myna as a technology preview and found its results varied by hardware and microphone. In its Dell XPS 9370 test, a USB headset improved transcription accuracy compared with the laptop microphone, but the system operated slowly. During a LibreOffice Writer test, spoken punctuation and editing requests were transcribed as words instead of being applied as commands.
Those observations make Myna potentially useful for dictation now, but not yet a full voice-control layer for desktop applications. The Register also reported that installing it downloaded close to 1 GB of dependencies and language-model files.
Should Ubuntu 26.04 users upgrade to 26.10?
Ubuntu 26.04 users will be offered the 26.10 upgrade only if they have selected notifications for all releases rather than LTS releases only, the Ubuntu Release Team said. Upgrades are free. Users whose systems need the new hardware support or other 26.10 components can make that trade-off against the shorter support period and the reported pre-release-kernel status.
Canonical released Edubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Cinnamon, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Studio, Ubuntu Unity and Xubuntu on the same day. The Ubuntu announcement directs users to its release notes for known issues and workarounds before upgrading.
This story draws on original reporting from The Register.
