Canonical
on 16 March 2026
Previewing at NVIDIA GTC 2026: NVIDIA CUDA support in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 architecture support in Ubuntu 26.04, Canonical’s official Ubuntu image for NVIDIA Jetson Thor, upcoming support for NVIDIA DGX Station and NVIDIA DOCA-OFED, and NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 support.
NVIDIA GTC 2026 is here, bringing together the technologies defining the next wave of AI innovation. Developers, researchers, and business leaders are converging to explore physical AI, AI factories, agentic AI, and high-performance inference. Across these rapidly evolving domains, one shared requirement remains constant: a secure, performant, and fully supported operating system that integrates seamlessly with NVIDIA AI infrastructure.
With Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, Canonical is continuing its collaboration with NVIDIA by directly distributing NVIDIA CUDA in Ubuntu, and by delivering day-one platform readiness for NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 rack-scale architecture. Together, these advancements provide developers and enterprises with a stable, enterprise-grade foundation for building, scaling, and operating AI workloads across edge, workstation, and data center environments.
Sneak peek: what you can expect at the Canonical booth this year
Join the Canonical team at Booth #3017 to see how we’re bridging the gap between AI experimentation and production. Our engineers will be on-site at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center demonstrating full-stack open source solutions, from optimized deployment workflows to real-world architectures.
Let’s dive into what you can expect.
CUDA support in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS
Canonical will directly distribute NVIDIA CUDA within Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, simplifying how developers access and maintain GPU-accelerated computing environments. By integrating CUDA into the Ubuntu archive, Canonical will reduce dependency fragmentation and eliminate the need for manual toolkit management across heterogeneous fleets.
For AI engineers and data scientists, this means CUDA libraries, drivers, and associated components will align with Ubuntu’s lifecycle enterprise support model. This integration strengthens Ubuntu as a trusted base layer for high-performance AI, HPC workloads, and accelerated data processing pipelines. Distributing CUDA within Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, ensures that developers can build once and deploy consistently, from local development environments to large-scale production clusters.
Vera Rubin NVL72 architecture support in Ubuntu 26.04
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, which releases in April 2026, introduces platform readiness for NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin NVL72 architecture, enabling early adoption of next-generation accelerated computing systems. Canonical is working closely with NVIDIA to ensure kernel, driver, and user-space integration are validated for enterprise deployment on Vera Rubin NVL72-based platforms.
This support provides a stable operating system foundation for customers adopting new GPU and system architectures as they emerge. By delivering coordinated enablement across drivers, firmware, and core system components, Ubuntu reduces configuration risk and accelerates time to production.
For organizations planning transitions to next-generation AI infrastructure, Ubuntu’s Vera Rubin NVL72 readiness ensures continuity across development, testing, and deployment environments. Enterprises can adopt new NVIDIA hardware with confidence that long-term support is integrated into the platform.
Official Ubuntu 24.04 LTS image for NVIDIA Jetson Thor
Canonical will be on-hand to show you the official Ubuntu 24.04 LTS image for NVIDIA Jetson Thor. This certified Ubuntu image, developed in collaboration with NVIDIA, provides a stable, supported, and compliant operating system layer for production environments – including in robotics, physical AI, and real-time reasoning.
For users of the NVIDIA JetPack SDK and its integrated AI stack, the Ubuntu image for Jetson Thor completes the circle and ensures that they can move at pace to deployment, on a trusted, enterprise-grade foundation. Through Ubuntu Pro, Canonical’s comprehensive subscription for open source security, developers benefit from up to 15 years of patching and maintenance for Ubuntu, as well as compliance tooling for frameworks including FIPS and DISA-STIG.
We’ll have an Ubuntu image running on a NVIDIA Jetson Thor dev kit – stop by our booth to see what it could do for you.
Deploying AI with NVIDIA Nemotron inference snaps on NVIDIA DGX Spark
Deploying large language models frequently introduces dependency conflicts, environment drift, and version management complexity. Canonical addresses this challenge through inference snaps – immutable, containerized packages that bundle optimized AI models with all required runtimes and libraries; optimized for the target silicon.
Following a recent livestream with the NVIDIA Developer community, Canonical demonstrated inference snaps on NVIDIA DGX Spark, where a single installation command delivered silicon-optimized models to any Ubuntu system. Building on this momentum, Canonical is collaborating with NVIDIA on packaging and distributing the NVIDIA Nemotron-3 family of open models. Inference snaps provide reproducibility, simplified deployment, and hardware-level optimization across Ubuntu devices, enabling consistent AI execution from local machines to enterprise clusters.
Stop by our booth to see inference snaps running on NVIDIA DGX Spark, and witness first-hand how you can harness powerful AI computing, literally at your desk.
Discover Canonical’s latest hardware enablements
We’ll be unveiling support for the NVIDIA DGX Station GB300, NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell Workstation Edition, and native NVIDIA DOCA-OFED support, Ubuntu is ready for the next wave of accelerated computing. Stop by our booth to chat about how these integrations can help stabilize your organization’s AI stack. Here’s a quick breakdown of what’s new.
DGX Station GB300: Ubuntu with NVIDIA AI Developer Tools
Ubuntu is being optimized as a fully validated OS for the newly announced DGX Station GB300. Think of it as a “data center at your desk”, with 775GB of coherent memory and 20 PFLOPS of performance, it’s built for heavy-duty local development.
This enablement ensures your team can prototype locally on the Blackwell architecture and scale seamlessly to the cloud with zero configuration drift. To find out more, come and find us at our booth – we’re excited to talk to you.
Ubuntu is ready for NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell Server Edition
We are also enabling official Ubuntu support for the new NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell Server Edition. This single-slot, power-efficient universal GPU is a game-changer for high-density professional environments from data center to the edge. Our focus is on stable driver integration and predictable support lifecycles, which can help you deploy NVIDIA Blackwell-based performance across your on-prem and edge infrastructure.
Upcoming DOCA-OFED integration
We’re working to bring the NVIDIA DOCA-OFED networking driver directly into Ubuntu’s native repositories. This integration is designed for high-throughput AI pipelines where RDMA and GPUDirect are essential for minimizing latency.
By moving this into the native OS layer, we’re aiming to eliminate manual driver management and the “kernel drift” that often breaks high-performance clusters. Come talk to us about how this native support can simplify your large-scale training environments.
About Canonical
Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu, provides open source security, support, and services. Our portfolio covers critical systems, from the smallest devices to the largest clouds, from the kernel to containers, from databases to AI. With customers that include top tech brands, emerging startups, governments and home users, Canonical delivers trusted open source for everyone.
Learn more at https://canonical.com/
Learn more
Visit us at GTC booth #3017 in the exhibitor hall.
Find out more about Canonical’s collaboration with NVIDIA.
