Canonical for a while has been developing Authd as an authentication service for external cloud-based identity providers. Authd was designed from the ground-up to provide secure management of identity and access for Ubuntu systems while only with next month’s Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release is it actually hitting the universe archive.
Authd hasn’t shipped in the archive of Ubuntu Linux releases up until now but those system administrators wanting to rely on it have needed to use a Canonical PPA or build from the upstream source. With next month’s Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release is the first time it’s being found in an official Ubuntu archive — the universe archive.
Authd allows for Ubuntu systems to authenticate users against cloud identity providers using modern standards like OpenID Connect. Authd is initially catering to Microsoft Entra ID and Google Cloud IAM though this daemon is modular by design to support other identity providers too.
Authd development will be following Ubuntu’s release cadence moving forward and with 26.04 is being supported as part of the Long Term Support life-cycle.
Those wishing to learn more about Authd with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS can read more in today’s announcement. The Go and Rust code making up Authd can be found as open-source on GitHub.
