After a brief beta testing period, Canonical unveiled a few days ago the launch of the new version of Ubuntu Linux 24.04 LTS codenamed “Noble Numbat” with a number of significant features and improvements.
Ubuntu LTS 24.04 As a long-term support version, it offers up to 12 years in the Making of support for those who opt for Ubuntu Pro, while the standard version of Ubuntu 24.04 has five years of security maintenance directly in the main Ubuntu repository.
What's new in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS “Noble Numbat”?
Ubuntu LTS 24.04 arrives with him Linux kernel 6.8 with improved system call performance, support for nested KVM in ppc64el, and access to the new beachefs file system.
On the desktop side it is presented GNOME 46 as default desktop environment. This version brings with it several improvements to the file management applications, highlighting Nautilus, which now has a redesigned user interface and an improved global search function. Additionally, GNOME 46 brings updates to the Settings app, including support for expandable notifications, a rework of the online account system, and better notifications.
NetworkManager now uses Netplan as your default configuration storage backend. When you upgrade, all connection profiles /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/ are migrated transparently to /etc/netplan/90-NM-*.yaml and become connection profiles rendered by Netplan in /run/NetworkManager/system-connections/.
It has been introducedor a new app store that replaces the previous Snap store. The application has been written from scratch using the Flutter tool. The new store is designed to handle both .deb and snap format applications (always giving priority to snap).
It has also been introduced a new Flutter based installer, which has a process that allows you to automate the installation using a .yaml configuration file (local or remote). The installer has also been visually improved, with bold new illustrations for each step and clearer, more concise text descriptions. Accessibility options have been added as a second step, and ZFS guided (advanced) installation support has been reintroduced
It also highlights the support for .NET 8 throughout the lifecycle of this LTS release, as well as Java with TCK certification, LTS for .NET. This release also adds updated tools, including Python 3.12, Ruby 3.2, PHP 8.3, and Go 1.22.
Have been introduced new management tools for Ubuntu Desktop and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), using shared installation technologies to allow image customization through tools such as autoinstall and cloud-init.
Also in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, Special attention has been paid to improving safety through various measures. One of them is the restrict unprivileged user namespaces. In this release, access to additional permissions within these namespaces is limited, reducing potential attack surfaces.
It is also highlighted that FORTIFY_SOURCE was raised to level 3, which improves the detection of memory safety violations in common functions such as memcpy() and snprintf(). On the ARM64 architecture, measures such as hardware-enforced pointer authentication and branch targeting were implemented to mitigate code reuse attacks.
AppArmor has also been updated to version 4.0, introducing various network access control enhancements, complex conditional policies, and the ability to defer access decisions to user-space programs. This enables advanced security models, such as interactive file access requests.
Regarding security in cryptographic protocols, Ubuntu 24.04 disables outdated and insecure versions of TLS (1.0 and 1.1) and DTLS 1.0 to prevent downgrade attacks that could expose sensitive data. These measures significantly contribute to improving the overall security of the operating system.
Of the other changes that stand out:
- System init updated to systemd 255.4
- The network stack was updated to Netplan 1.0 162 with support for simultaneous WPA2 and WPA3, Mellanox VF-LAG for high-performance SR-IOV networking, and VXLAN enhancements.
- openssh no longer depends on libsystemd, reducing the number of dependencies and making it less prone to future security issues
- An update tool called Firmware Updater to update firmware efficiently without running a full application manager in the background.
- Support for the QAT accelerator built into Intel processors, providing tools to accelerate calculations used in compression and encryption.
- Converted packages for the 32-bit Armhf architecture to use the 64-bit time_t type to handle times after January 19, 2038.
Download Ubuntu 24.04 LTS “Noble Numbat”
For interested in being able to download the new version, You should know that you can get it from the official Ubuntu website in its downloads section or from the releases page. Download Ubuntu 24.04 LTS “Noble Numbat”