Ubuntu has long provided hardware enablement "HWE" stacks for Ubuntu LTS releases to provide a newer kernel and Mesa drivers and more for better supporting new/modern hardware on the long-term support Ubuntu Linux releases. With Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, Canonical will also now be providing a virtualization HWE stack for shipping newer virtualization / confidential computing features.

Due to AMD and Intel continuing to upstream new SEV-SNP and Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) features, respectively, there are now plans for a virtualization hardware enablement stack on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.

Future Ubuntu 26.04 LTS point releases will ship with updated versions of QEMU, libvirt, EDK2, and SeaBIOS via new "-hwe" post-fixed packages. This is for complementing the HWE Linux kernel in order to support the latest AMD and Intel virtualization features on servers, especially around confidential computing.

The Ubuntu virtualization HWE stack is planned to be upgraded every six months to match the latest upstream versions supported in Ubuntu Linux. Those wanting to stick to the stock versions can simply avoid the qemu-hwe / libvirt-hwe / edk2-hwe / seabios-hwe packages.

More details on the new Ubuntu virtualization HWE stack plans for Ubuntu 26.04 LTS can be found via today's announcement.