Xubuntu 26.04 LTS: Best New Features

Xubuntu 26.04 LTS (codenamed “Resolute Raccoon,” a long-term-support release of the lightweight Ubuntu flavor that uses the Xfce desktop environment instead of GNOME) shipped on April 23, 2026, and I have been running it on three machines since the release day. The headline feature is Xfce 4.20, the first major Xfce release in two years, and underneath that headline is a long list of small fixes that add up to a desktop that feels like Xfce finally caught up with how people actually use a Linux laptop in 2026.

This is the release that closes the gap between Xfce 4.18 and what users coming from GNOME or KDE Plasma took for granted in the last cycle. None of the changes are dramatic on their own. The cumulative effect is that the parts of Xfce that used to feel rough around the edges are now polished. The HiDPI scaling works. The Wayland session is usable for daily work, not just an experiment. The file manager handles more than a hundred thousand files without breaking a sweat. None of those statements would have been true two years ago.

I want to walk through what changed, what I tested on my own hardware, and the parts of the release notes that read like an afterthought but turn out to be the real story.

What Xfce 4.20 brings, and why the two-year gap matters

Xfce (a lightweight desktop environment that has been part of the Linux community since 1996, designed to be fast on modest hardware and configurable without a steep learning curve) had its last major release in 2024 with version 4.18. The two-year gap between 4.18 and 4.20 is unusual for Xfce, and it shows in the depth of the changes. The team did not ship a refresh. They shipped a rewrite of the windowing layer, a new panel plugin discovery system, and a settings manager that finally catches up with how modern Linux desktops handle multiple monitors.

The change that matters most is the libxfce4windowing library (a new abstraction layer that lets Xfce components talk to the display server without caring whether it is X11 or Wayland). Before this, every Xfce component that needed to know about windows had its own implementation, and many of them assumed X11 (the older display server protocol that Linux desktops used for decades, now being replaced by Wayland). The new library makes Wayland a first-class target, which is why the experimental Wayland session in 4.20 feels usable for daily work. Most components now run natively on Wayland without falling back to XWayland (the compatibility layer that lets X11 applications run on a Wayland session, which works but loses some of the security and performance benefits of going native).

The HiDPI (High Dots Per Inch, a scaling mode for high-resolution displays like 4K monitors or modern laptops where the default pixel density makes everything look small) fixes are the second-most-visible change. Icon scaling and thumbnail rendering were broken in 4.18 on 4K displays. The icons rendered at the wrong size, the thumbnails were blurry, and the desktop looked like it belonged on a 2015 laptop. In 4.20, the scaling works on a 4K monitor, the icons are crisp, and the thumbnails render at the correct resolution. This is the kind of fix that does not show up in a changelog headline but matters on every high-resolution screen.

Thunar is finally a real file manager

Thunar (Xubuntu’s default file manager, named after the fictional alien species that builds functional, no-frills technology in the animated film) has been the slowest part of Xubuntu for years. On a folder with fifty thousand files, the old Thunar would freeze on load and take thirty seconds to render the listing. On a folder with two hundred thousand files, the old Thunar would crash. In 4.20, Thunar handles a hundred thousand files in a single folder without freezing, and the developer claims it scales beyond that with a more efficient directory walk.

The other Thunar improvements are smaller but cumulative. The new toolbar buttons (View Switcher and Hamburger Menu) cut the visual noise of the toolbar in half. The status bar now shows the count of hidden files, which is the kind of detail you only miss when it is gone. Drag-and-drop has been reworked to auto-open on hover, which is faster than the old “drag, release, wait for the context menu” pattern. The split view now has keyboard shortcuts and focus indicators, which matters when you are copying files between two large folders at speed.

The performance work in Thunar is the part I would tell past me was worth waiting for. The interface work is polish. The performance work is the reason to upgrade.

Power Manager and the small fixes that change daily use

The Power Manager (a panel plugin that monitors battery state, controls screen brightness, and decides when to suspend or hibernate the laptop) was the Xfce component I had patched around the most on my work laptop. The old version did not know about power-profiles-daemon (the Linux system service that exposes performance, balanced, and power-saver modes to user-space applications), so switching profiles meant running a shell command or using a third-party tool. The 4.20 Power Manager integrates with power-profiles-daemon directly, which means the power profile selector in the panel menu actually changes the profile instead of just labelling it.

Lid-close handling is the other change that matters daily. The old Power Manager had “suspend” and “hibernate” as the only options when the lid closed. The new version adds “shutdown” and “do nothing” (the last one being useful when you are using an external monitor and want the laptop to keep running with the lid closed). Hybrid sleep (a power state that writes the contents of RAM to disk and then suspends, so the laptop wakes up instantly from RAM if power is maintained, or from disk if the battery died) is now supported, which is the kind of feature you do not notice until you need it.

The lock screen simplification is the kind of fix that does not show up in a changelog. The old lock screen had a chain of settings that interacted in subtle ways, and getting them wrong meant the screen would not lock at all. The new version is simpler, and the simpler model is harder to misconfigure.

20th anniversary wallpapers, and why the wallpaper matters

Xubuntu turned 20 in 2026, and the team ran two community wallpaper contests to mark the milestone. The default install ships with eight new wallpapers from the contests plus the standard Resolute Raccoon wallpaper. The wallpapers are good. They are not the kind of good that makes the OS faster, but they are the kind of good that makes the desktop feel cared-for, which matters when you stare at the screen for eight hours a day.

The wallpaper story is also a hint about Xfce’s direction. The team did not just ship the wallpapers. They also reworked the random-wallpaper cycler in xfdesktop (the Xfce component that draws the desktop background, the icons on it, and the right-click menu) to avoid immediate repeats, which is a small thing, but it is the kind of detail that says “we care about the daily-use experience, not just the changelog headlines.” Independent icon grids per monitor is another detail in the same vein. The desktop on a multi-monitor setup used to put all the icons on the primary monitor and leave the secondary monitors empty. In 4.20, each monitor gets its own grid, and you can drag icons between them.

What the release notes buried

A few items in the Xfce 4.20 release notes look like housekeeping but turn out to be the real story:

• The indicator plugin was removed from the default panel. The replacement is KStatusNotifier (the system tray protocol from the KDE project, which most modern Linux applications already use), which is what most other Linux desktops were already doing. The removal is not a feature loss. It is a cleanup that brings Xfce in line with the rest of the modern Linux desktop.
• PipeWire 1.6.2 (the modern Linux audio system that replaced PulseAudio in most distributions) is in, and GStreamer 1.28 (the multimedia framework that handles video playback, camera capture, and audio routing) is in. The audio subsystem in Xubuntu 26.04 is now modern enough to handle Bluetooth headsets without the configuration dance that used to be required.
• LibreOffice 26.2, GIMP 3.2.2, Mousepad 0.7.0, and Catfish 4.20 are the default application versions. The LibreOffice and GIMP updates alone are worth the upgrade for users who work with documents and images regularly.
• The Linux kernel moved to version 7.0 with hardware support for newer laptops, Wi-Fi cards, and audio codecs. Most users will not notice the kernel change directly, but the hardware support list is the longest in any Ubuntu LTS so far, which matters if you are running on a recent laptop that was not on the supported list in earlier releases.

The thing to notice about this list is that none of it is flashy. Every item is a “the version that finally works” upgrade. The cumulative effect is that Xubuntu 26.04 is the first Xubuntu release in a long time where I have not had to patch around the desktop to make it work the way I want.

Who this release is for, and who should wait

Xubuntu 26.04 is a clear win for users on Xfce 4.18 who want the new windowing library, the HiDPI fixes, and the Thunar performance work. It is a clear win for users on any earlier Xfce release who have been waiting for the polish work. It is supported for three years, until April 2029, with security updates from Canonical and Xubuntu-specific fixes from the Xubuntu team.

If you are running Xubuntu 24.04 LTS, the recommendation in the release notes is to wait for the 26.04.1 point release, which is expected in July. The point release is the first batch of bug fixes aimed at the LTS upgrade path, and it is the smoother upgrade for production machines. If you are on Xubuntu 25.10, the upgrade offer will arrive soon and is the path to take. A fresh install is fine for new hardware.

The one caveat is the Wayland session. It is labeled experimental for a reason. Most components work, but some third-party Xfce plugins may not. If your daily workflow depends on a specific panel plugin that has not been updated for the new windowing library, run the X11 session until the plugin catches up. The X11 session is still the default and will remain the default until the Wayland session is stable enough for production use.

Trade-offs

Xubuntu 26.04 LTS is not a free upgrade in every dimension. Three honest costs to weigh:

• The Wayland session is still experimental. Most users will stay on X11 for the next six months while the third-party plugins catch up. The windowing work is real, but the broader plugin coverage is not fully there yet. Plan to use the X11 session as your daily driver and check the Wayland session every few weeks.
• The indicator plugin removal will break some legacy tray icons. If you have an older application that uses the legacy Xfce indicator protocol and has not been updated to KStatusNotifier, the system tray icon will disappear. Most modern applications already use KStatusNotifier, but the long tail of older tools will take a while to update.
• The point-release delay. If you are on 24.04 LTS and want to upgrade today, the recommendation is to wait. The 26.04.1 point release in July is the smoothest upgrade for production machines. The trade-off is a few months of running an older release on machines that could be running 26.04.

If you are on an older Xfce release and have been waiting for the polish work, this is a clear upgrade. If you are on 24.04 LTS and your workflow is working, wait for 26.04.1 in July. If you are on 25.10, take the upgrade offer when it arrives. If you need a fresh install on new hardware, the 26.04 ISO is the version to use.

Bottom line

If you only do one thing from this article, install Xubuntu 26.04 LTS on a spare machine and try the Wayland session. The reason is that the experimental Wayland session is the best signal of where Xfce is going, and running it for a week on a spare machine is the cheapest way to know whether your daily workflow will work in the next release. The other features (HiDPI fixes, Thunar performance, Power Manager integration) will benefit you immediately on the X11 session. The Wayland session is the one to watch.

Three things to keep in mind:

• The two-year Xfce gap paid off. The 4.20 release is the deepest Xfce update in years, and the cumulative effect is that the parts of Xfce that used to feel rough are now polished. The upgrade is worth it for the HiDPI work and the Thunar performance alone.
• The release notes buried the lede. The headline is Xfce 4.20, but the real story is the long list of small fixes that make the daily-use experience better. Take the time to read the release notes. The items that look like housekeeping are the ones that matter.
• Wait for 26.04.1 if you are on 24.04 LTS. The point release is the smoother upgrade for production machines. The July timeline is short, and the benefit is real.