Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
The latest version of Ubuntu Unity is 24.04 LTS, a long term support release out on 25 April, 2024. This is the ninth overall release of Ubuntu Unity and the third LTS version since the project started in 2020. Because this release is an LTS, it has support for three years, until April, 2027.
This new release actually brings only a few, small changes, which is how it should be. Ideally over a two year development cycle, all the changes should be introduced in the three interim releases, leaving the LTS with not much new beyond its extended support period.
Installation
I downloaded the ISO file for this release from the official source using BitTorrent. Once I had the file, I did a command line SHA256 sum check to ensure the file was good.
This download was 3.5 GB, the same size as the last one, Ubuntu Unity 23.10. It is worth noting that this is about half the size of the mainstream Ubuntu 24.04 LTS which is 6.1 GB.
I tested out Ubuntu Unity 24.04 LTS in a series of live sessions from a USB stick equipped with Ventoy 1.0.98. Ubuntu Unity is not listed as officially supported by Ventoy but it worked just fine.
System requirements
Ubuntu Unity does not specify any system requirements but it is probably safe to assume that it is the same as Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, a minimum of: 2 GHz dual core processor 4 GB of RAM
New
The development team led by Rudra Saraswat has been working on a few projects lately. The first one is to get Lomiri working on Ubuntu Unity. This was originally intended to be complete in the autumn of 2023, but took longer than expected. Lomiri is the new name for Unity 8 and is being developed by the UBports community primarily as a phone interface for their Ubuntu Touch project. The Ubuntu Unity team has been working with UBports to get it working on the desktop, as it is Wayland-ready. The current Unity 7 used on Ubuntu Unity and the still-under-development Unity X both are still tied to the old X.org display server, due to dependencies, especially the Nux OpenGL toolkit. Rather than incorporate Lomiri into this Ubuntu Unity release, it has been put out as a separate test ISO file under the name Ubuntu Lomiri 24.04. Saraswat notes: “Unlike the half-broken testing Lomiri ISOs I have built in the past, this one’s quite stable and can be installed on real hardware, while also including the Ubuntu Touch LightDM greeter and for that matter, several apps you’d only expect to find on Ubuntu Touch. Do bear in mind, however, that you may encounter occasional crashes here and there.”
Ubuntu Unity 24.04 LTS has a new installer, Callamares, that has been successfully used on Lubuntu for several years and now also on Kubuntu. It is quite trouble-free and easy to use.
Settings
As in the past, this release has its settings spread out a bit. They are found in the regular settings menu, the top panel brush icon, and the Unity Tweak Tool. Once you find them though, they all work well enough.
The Unity Tweak Tool offers four window themes: Ambiance, Radiance, Yaru, and Yaru-dark, plus 37 icon themes and seven cursor styles. The regular settings menu has only two of the window themes, Yaru and Yaru-dark. The settings menu has 20 accent colors to choose from, while the brush icon has ten instead of the twenty choices in the last release. I am not sure this really matters, though, as most users will probably just find one they like and use it.
This release code name is “Noble Numbat” so there is a new default numbat crown wallpaper, similar to that found with the mainstream Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. There are also 14 other wallpapers, six of which have numbats on them and eight that don’t.
Ubuntu Unity continues to offer lots of user customization options which differentiates it from the mainstream Ubuntu distribution, which has very limited choices.
Applications
Some of the applications included with Ubuntu Unity 24.04 LTS are: Archive Manager (File Roller) 44.1 file archiver Atril 1.26.2 PDF viewer Cheese 44.1 webcam application* CUPS 2.4.7 printing system Document Scanner (Simple Scan) 46.0 optical scanner Firefox 118.0.1 web browser GDebi 0.9.5.7 .deb package installer* Gnome Disks 46.0 disk manager Gnome Screenshot 41.0 screenshot tool* Gnome Terminal 3.52.0 terminal emulator Gparted 1.5.0 partition editor* Image Viewer (Eye of MATE) 1.26.1 image viewer LibreOffice 24.2.2 office suite Mate Calculator 1.26.0 calculator* Nemo 6.0.2 file manager Pluma 1.26.1 text editor PulseAudio 16.1 audio controller Remmina 1.4.35 remote desktop client Rhythmbox 3.4.7 music player* Shotwell 0.32.6 photo manager Startup Disk Creator 0.3.17 USB ISO writer* Synaptic 0.91.3 package management system* Transmission 4.0.5 bit torrent client Unity 7.7.0 interface* Unity Tweak Tool 0.0.7 settings manager* VLC 3.0.20 media player XTerm 390-1 terminal emulator * indicates same application version as used in Ubuntu Unity 23.10 supplied as a snap, so version depends on the upstream package manager
For reasons that are unclear, as they are not mentioned in the Ubuntu Unity 24.04 LTS release announcement, both the Gnome System Monitor and the Thunderbird email client have been removed. Within the general Ubuntu application packaging system, Thunderbird has moved from a .deb file to a Snap package, but there is no indication that this was a factor in omitting it. Lubuntu removed its email client in 2022, so Ubuntu Unity is just following suit. These days most people probably make use of webmail instead of email clients anyway.
The Ubuntu Unity file manager remains Nemo, this time as version 6.0.2, taken from the Cinnamon desktop environment version with the same number. Nemo works really well and has a lot of useful customization settings but, as implemented in Ubuntu Unity, still lacks bulk file renaming. Adding a stand-alone bulk file renamer, like GPRename, is a good idea.
LibreOffice 24.2.2 is provided complete, except for the LibreOffice Base database application, which can be installed from the Ubuntu repositories, if needed.
Conclusions
Ubuntu Unity 24.04 LTS is a very solid and refined release with only minimal changes from the last interim release. It provides a good working desktop for Unity fans and should keep them happy until the next LTS version comes out in April, 2026.
External links
Official website: https://ubuntuunity.org/