Member-only story
Taming the Resolute Raccoon: Developing Geospatial Intelligence Apps with Qt on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS
The upgrade to a new LTS release is always a mix of excitement and apprehension. The promise of newer packages, better security, and a more modern stack is alluring. But for developers, especially those of us working in the intricate world of geospatial intelligence with frameworks like Qt and ArcGIS Maps SDK for Qt, a major release can feel like walking into a minefield.
Our team recently made the leap to Ubuntu 26.04 LTS (Resolute Raccoon). What followed was a journey through missing libraries, cryptic error messages, and a fundamental clash between the old and new display servers. This is the story of how we diagnosed and solved these issues, and a guide to help you avoid the same pitfalls.
The First Sign of Trouble: The Missing Qt Installer
Our adventure began with the most basic of tasks: installing Qt. We downloaded the official Qt Online Installer, a standard prebuilt binary, and tried to run it. Nothing happened. It failed immediately, complaining about a missing shared library: libxcb-icccm.so.4.
This was our first clue that Ubuntu 26.04’s defaults were not geared toward our workflow. The new LTS has fully embraced Wayland as the default display server, and the…
