The Integrated ROCm Story For Ubuntu 26.04 Still Playing Out
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is just three weeks out for release with many great features in tow from the GNOME 50 desktop to the very leading-edge Linux 7.0 kernel and many other package updates. One feature that many had been looking forward to is Canonical's plans to ship AMD ROCm directly in the Ubuntu archive for a much cleaner experience for those wanting to make use of AMD's open-source GPU compute stack. As a common question in recent weeks from readers, it remains to be seen if that milestone will be achieved for the Ubuntu 26.04 launch day.
Back in that December announcement from Canonical, one of the main points of this Ubuntu 26.04 promotion for ROCm was:
But if you try out sudo apt install rocm today on the post-beta state of Ubuntu 26.04, that key ROCm meta package isn't there and other ROCm packages aren't yet bundled either.
When looking at the rocm* packages in the resolute archive for Ubuntu 26.04, for the packages that are there they are at ROCm 7.1. There is also the ROCm-devel PPA also still on the older ROCm 7.1 series. ROCm 7.2 released in January with many new features and recently succeeded by ROCm 7.2.1 with fixes and also important now for the improved ROCm Windows WSL2 support.
Yesterday the application for package upload rights for Canonical engineer Talha Can Havadar was finally approved. Talha intends to maintain the ROCm packages in Ubuntu. We'll see if this ROCm support gets all squared away (and updated) during this feature-freeze period in time for the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release on 23 April or happens after the fact. For the moment at least, those wanting to use ROCm on Ubuntu Linux are best off continuing to use the latest upstream ROCm packages from AMD.
Back in that December announcement from Canonical, one of the main points of this Ubuntu 26.04 promotion for ROCm was:
"Simpler installation with ‘apt install rocm’ or as an automatic dependency for other projects, like ollama-amd."
But if you try out sudo apt install rocm today on the post-beta state of Ubuntu 26.04, that key ROCm meta package isn't there and other ROCm packages aren't yet bundled either.
When looking at the rocm* packages in the resolute archive for Ubuntu 26.04, for the packages that are there they are at ROCm 7.1. There is also the ROCm-devel PPA also still on the older ROCm 7.1 series. ROCm 7.2 released in January with many new features and recently succeeded by ROCm 7.2.1 with fixes and also important now for the improved ROCm Windows WSL2 support.
Yesterday the application for package upload rights for Canonical engineer Talha Can Havadar was finally approved. Talha intends to maintain the ROCm packages in Ubuntu. We'll see if this ROCm support gets all squared away (and updated) during this feature-freeze period in time for the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release on 23 April or happens after the fact. For the moment at least, those wanting to use ROCm on Ubuntu Linux are best off continuing to use the latest upstream ROCm packages from AMD.