AMD ROCm software will be directly packaged and maintained in Ubuntu
Canonical and AMD are tightening their partnership around GPU compute on Linux. Canonical will start packaging and maintaining AMD ROCm directly in Ubuntu, so users will be able to install the full ROCm stack straight from the official repositories starting with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, with updates in each later release. The work covers AI and high performance computing libraries for AMD Instinct and Radeon GPUs, targeting everything from data center servers to laptops, WSL setups and edge devices.
ROCm is AMD’s open software stack that lets supported GPUs run AI and heavy compute workloads. It bundles drivers, runtimes, compilers and libraries so frameworks like PyTorch, TensorFlow and JAX can talk directly to AMD GPUs and APUs without extra glue code from the user. For developers, it fills the same role on AMD hardware that CUDA does on NVIDIA cards, but with an open stack and source code on public repositories.
Canonical is pleased to announce an expanded collaboration with AMD to package and maintain AMD ROCm™ software directly in Ubuntu. AMD ROCm is an open software ecosystem to enable hardware-accelerated AI/ML and HPC workloads on AMD Instinct™ and AMD Radeon™ GPUs, simplifying the deployment of AI infrastructure with long term support from Canonical.
— Canonicla
By moving ROCm into Ubuntu’s own archives, installation becomes as simple as “apt install rocm”, or it can come in automatically as a dependency for other packages such as AI apps and container images. Canonical says users will get both stable long-term ROCm builds and newer releases every six months, with security and performance updates delivered through regular apt upgrade. Under Ubuntu Pro, ROCm in LTS releases can receive up to 15 years of maintenance, and personal Ubuntu Pro subscriptions remain free.
Canonical is also building a dedicated engineering team for ROCm packaging and plans to submit the same work to Debian, which should help toolchains and Docker images that rely on standard Debian-style packaging. For anyone running or planning AMD-based AI infrastructure, this reduces setup friction and lines up ROCm support with the way Ubuntu already handles drivers and libraries from other silicon vendors.
Source: Canonical
