A new media player and slick system monitoring utility are on course to ship in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS ‘Resolute Raccoon’, which is due for release on April 23, 2026.
Showtime is set supplant Totem as media player in Ubuntu 26.04’s expanded install, while Resources is to replace GNOME System Monitor as the default tool for process management and hardware usage monitoring.
This is the latest rejig to Ubuntu’s default desktop software set since the last long-term support release, following the addition of Papers (document viewer) in 25.04 and a switch to Ptyxis (terminal) and Loupe (image viewer) in 25.10.
According to Canonical’s Jean Baptiste Lallement, the swap is intended to provide “modern, consistent, and easy to use defaults that fit naturally into the rest of the desktop environment.”
Both new applications are built using GTK4/libadwaita, meaning they marry neatly with the rest of the Ubuntu desktop (well, better than their predecessors did).
Showtime for Showtime
Totem has been Ubuntu’s default video player since 2004 but since 2023 it’s only preinstalled if users select the ‘expanded’ option during installation. It’s not a bad player; Totem remains functional. It’s just far from the best choice for the most people in 2025.
Besides which, Showtime‘s addition was expected as it is a GNOME Core App, replacing Totem upstream in GNOME 49.
You don’t need to wait for Ubuntu 26.04 to roll out to try Showtime. It’s available to install on Ubuntu 25.10 from the archives, so search it out in App Center or open your terminal and run this command to install it:
sudo apt install showtime
Resources for Resources?
Resources is the more interesting swap because it’s not a GNOME Core App, but a community-made tool (albeit part of the GNOME Circle, which is a curated collection of apps that meet GNOME’s quality standards but aren’t maintained by GNOME itself).
The developer of Resources describes it as a “simple yet powerful” system monitor “capable of displaying usage and details of your [system hardware and] capable of listing and terminating running graphical applications as well as processes”.
Why not Mission Center, an equally popular ‘modern’ system monitor designed for GNOME? Ubuntu considered it, Lallement says but the “superior accessibility support in Resources” made it a better choice for an LTS release.
When I covered the recent update to Resources a lot of comments praised its design, so to Ubuntu developer’s planning — though as ever in development, plans can change — to make it part of the default Ubuntu experience is encouraging.
To give Resources a real-world test right now you can install the latest release from Flathub – described as “the official and only supported way” to install it.
Don’t like either?
Both Totem and GNOME System Montior (the old apps) will remain available to install from the Ubuntu archives so that those who like using them, can keep doing so.
Those who upgrade to Ubuntu 26.04 LTS from an earlier version will not have them forcibly uninstalled, but the new apps will be installed alongside the old ones.