Ubuntu Raises CPU And RAM Requirements Above Windows 11 Amid Linux’s Steam Surge

Canonical has posted a new set of system requirements for the release of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, otherwise known as Resolute Raccoon, and they are now higher than what Microsoft recommends for Windows 11. Notably, the new requirements arrive amid another surge in Linux usage on Steam, with the latest Steam survey revealing an all-time high metric for Linux.

According to the release notes for Ubuntu 26.04, the desktop build requires a 2GHz dual-core processor or better, at least 6GB of RAM, and 25GB of free hard drive space. The requirements for Ubuntu Server 26.04 LTS are a bit tamer, checking in at 1.5GB of RAM and 4GB of storage, though they scale with your use case.

To put it into perspective, the system requirements for Windows 11 call for a 1GHz processor with two or more cores, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage. There are ...