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Out on 10 October, 2024, Ubuntu 24.10 is notable for a number of reasons.
First, of course, this marks the beginning of a new Ubuntu development cycle. Following April’s long term support (LTS) version, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, this new edition is the first of three interim releases that will be testbeds for the innovations and changes that will eventually land in the next LTS, Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, expected in April, 2026. So, we will keep tabs on what is new along the way to that next LTS.
Second, Ubuntu 24.10 denotes twenty years of Ubuntu! The first Ubuntu version was 4.10 “Warty Warthog”, so named by Mark Shuttleworth because of its rough state when released on 20 October, 2004. With its twice-yearly release schedule, it improved quickly and now, here we are celebrating twenty years of Ubuntu with release 24.10.
Third, this release, “Oracular Oriole” may be the hardest tongue twister of a code name yet used in the Ubuntu world. I challenge anyone to say “Oracular Oriole” fast three times!
Fourth, this is the second Ubuntu release that has had an “O” code name. The previous one, “Oneiric Ocelot”, was used for Ubuntu 11.10, out on 13 October, 2011. Since the English alphabet has 26 letters and Ubuntu releases are made every six months, the code name letters repeat every 13 years.
And fifth, with Ubuntu 24.10, it has now been using systemd as its initialization system for twenty releases, since Ubuntu 15.04, with no notable issues.
Installation
I downloaded the ISO file from the official Ubuntu website using BitTorrent. This download was 5.7 GB which is actually 7% smaller than the last release.
As usual, I carried out an SHA256 sum check on the ISO file from the command line to ensure that the download was good and it passed.
I did my testing from a USB stick equipped with Ventoy 1.0.99. Ubuntu is listed as officially supported and it booted up fine, at least on modern hardware.
System requirements
The recommended minimum system requirements for Ubuntu 24.10 have not substantially changed since 20.04 LTS, although the wording has been updated a bit and is now given as:
2 GHz dual-core processor 4096 MiB RAM (system memory) for physical installs 2048 MiB RAM for virtualised installs 25 GB (8.6 GB for minimal) of hard-drive space (or USB stick, memory card or external drive but see LiveCD for an alternative approach) 3D acceleration-capable GPU with at least 256 MB of VRAM 1024 x 768 or higher resolution display USB flash drive or DVD drive or for the installer media Internet access is helpful
Overall, this means that Ubuntu 24.10 should run okay on hardware that was designed for Windows 7 or later, although I would suggest at least 8 GB of RAM as a working minimum.
New
Despite all the hype in the official announcements, this release does not have a lot new for desktop users and most of the changes that are incorporated are small.
The Power Profiles Manager now supports multiple optimization drivers and has battery awareness to automatically increase the optimization levels when your computer is running on battery.
The App Center has been updated and now shows installation progress. It also now has support for installing third party .deb files, something that a number of reviewers had asked for. I guess they didn’t like just using GDebi instead.
New this time around is the Security Center (file name: desktop-security-center) which has “permissions prompting” for home directory permissions. The interface is marked “experimental” and it is definitely a work in progress with more features intended to be added over time. It is provided as a Snap file and is free software under the GNU Affero General Public License 3.0.
The Ubuntu 24.10 desktop is now based on GNOME 47 and includes some of the applications from that set. GNOME 47 also brings new floating dialogue buttons, an improved interface on low-resolution displays, hardware encoded screen recording, better GTK rendering when using older hardware, and persistent remote logins among other minor changes.
The Ubuntu launcher also now shows the progress on Snap files which are being updated in the background in place of the dock icon just disappearing. It also has a redesigned icon right-click menu that includes an “app details” option which opens up the Ubuntu App Center to present those promised details. I am not sure how useful this feature really is, since if the application is on the launcher, you already have it installed.
Support for fingerprint enabled devices has also been improved.
Ubuntu 24.10 now uses a Wayland protocol display server by default instead of X.org, including for computers with Nvidia graphics, although X.org is still available on boot-up if you prefer.
There are many behind-the-scenes changes in this release that most desktop users will probably not notice. These include: binutils 2.43.1; BlueZ 5.77 Bluetooth; Cairo 1.18.2; GCC 14.2; glibc 2.40; LLVM 19; .NET 9 available, with .NET 8 support extended to IBM Power; Netplan v1.1; NetworkManager 1.48; Noto Color Emoji Font 2.047 with Unicode 16 support; OpenJDK 21, with versions 23 and 24 available; OpenSSL 3.3; Poppler 24.08 PDF rendering; Python 3.12.7; Rust 1.80 and xdg-desktop-portal 1.18; among the other hidden items.
This release uses Linux kernel 6.11 which has some new features, including default crash dumps, as well as the usual array of updated hardware support. The initialization system is systemd v256.5.
Settings
Ubuntu 24.10 brings some changes to settings. GNOME 47 now has ten user-selectable accent colors, a feature which Ubuntu has had since Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and which the GNOME desktop adopted. Ubuntu 24.10 moves to using those upstream GNOME accents instead of its own but the results are the same.
Like recent Ubuntu versions, 24.10 offers just two window color themes, “default” (ie light) and dark.
Like all new versions of Ubuntu, this release comes with a new wallpaper. This one is oriole-themed, of course, and changes to a dark wallpaper when the window color theme is switched to dark. There are 13 wallpapers provided, including eight oriole-themed ones.
The 20th anniversary celebration includes a Warty Warthog nostalgia wallpaper with the anniversary logo, all in brown. Other anniversary items are a special accent color called “warty brown” and the original Ubuntu 4.10 start-up sound on boot which can be turned off if you prefer.
Applications
As in recent Ubuntu releases, if you install the default minimal installation you will get only Firefox, Nautilus, GNOME Text Editor and not much more, although any needed applications can easily be added from the repositories. The supplied ISO file does actually include the “extended selection” of applications, though, in case you would rather have the full collection. The live session of Ubuntu boots up to the extended selection.
Some of the applications included with the full 24.10 LTS extended selection are:
Archive Manager (file-roller) 44.3 file archiver Deja Dup 45.2 file back-ups* Firefox 131.0.2 web browser GNOME Calendar 47.0 desktop calendar GNOME Clocks 47.0 clocks GNOME Disks 46.1 disk manager GNOME Disk Usage Analyzer (baobab) 47.0 graphical disk display GNOME Document Scanner (simple-scan) 46.0 optical scanner* GNOME Document Viewer (evince) 46.3.1 PDF viewer GNOME Files (nautilus) 47.0 file manager GNOME Image Viewer (Eye of Gnome) 47.0 image viewer GNOME Snapshot 47 beta webcam application GNOME Terminal 3.54.0 terminal emulator GNOME Text Editor 47.0 text editor GNOME Videos (totem) 43.0 movie player* Gparted 1.5.0 partition editor* LibreOffice 24.8.2.1 office suite, less LibreOffice Base PipeWire 1.2.4 audio controller Remmina 1.4.35 remote desktop client* Rhythmbox 3.4.7 music player* Security Center (desktop-security-center) 0+git.84f197a security controller Shotwell 0.32.7 photo manager Startup Disk Creator (usb-creator-gtk) 0.3.17 USB ISO writer* Thunderbird 128.3.0 ESR email client Transmission 4.0.6 bit torrent client Ubuntu App Center 1.0.0 package management system Wget 1.21.5 command line webpage downloader * indicates same application version as used in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS supplied as a Snap, so the version depends on the upstream package manager *** indicates included on the ISO for boot-up but not included in a full installation
The application collection is a mix of GNOME versions, this time mostly from GNOME 47, with a few GNOME 44, 45 and 46 leftovers.
The APT 3.0 package manager, which runs in GNOME Terminal, has a friendlier user interface, spacing the lines and items out for better clarity, at least for users who do their package management from the command line.
The GNOME Files 47.0 (Nautilus) file manager has had some upgrades, including a sidebar redesign with the bookmarks for local folders further down and “trash” moved up, similar to Nemo. Bookmarks can now be removed with a right click, plus added and reordered using drag and drop. Internal drives are now displayed directly, instead of being under “other locations”, which is convenient. File searches have also been redesigned, including a new info button.
The GNOME Disk Usage Analyzer has had a redesign to make it look more up-to-date.
Conclusions
Ubuntu has come a long way since that first somewhat “warty” release twenty years ago. Today it is not only widely-used, but highly influential as well, spawning many official flavors and other derivative Linux distributions.
Ubuntu 24.10 not only marks the twenty year Ubuntu anniversary, but also kicks off a new developmental cycle with some incremental changes. It will be interesting to see what the next interim release, Ubuntu 25.04, brings when it arrives in April, 2025.
External links
Official website: https://ubuntu.com/