Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Out on 10 October, 2024, Lubuntu 24.10 is the first interim release of this development cycle which will lead to the next long term support (LTS) version due in April, 2026. On the road to that LTS, we will see two more interim releases that will try out new software and ideas. These will be Lubuntu 25.04 and 25.10.
As an interim release, Lubuntu 24.10 comes with just nine months of support, until July, 2025.
Lubuntu 24.10 is the 30th release of Lubuntu overall, the 27th since it became an official flavor and the 17th since it moved from the LXDE desktop to the current LXQt desktop. For some reason, the official release announcement does not claim any credit for those first three releases before Lubuntu became an official flavor and notes this as the 27th release. But, some of us were around back then and used Lubuntu 10.04, 10.10 and 11.04 before it became an official flavor with the release of 11.10. So with this new 24.10 release Lubuntu is now 14 years old!
Installation
I downloaded Lubuntu 24.10 via BitTorrent from the official source and then did a command line SHA256 sum check. I recommend everyone do this check with each ISO download, prior to booting it, just to make sure the file is valid and avoid any installation problems.
I dropped the ISO file onto a USB stick equipped with Ventoy 1.0.99 and booted it up which worked perfectly, as expected, since Lubuntu is officially supported by Ventoy. On boot-up Ventoy does all the hard work of unpacking the files and making it all work.
The Lubuntu 24.10 ISO file was 3.5 GB to download which makes it 11% bigger than the last 24.04 LTS, which was 3.1 GB.
System requirements
Since the release of Lubuntu 18.10, the project announced that it would no longer publish any minimum system requirements. That said, it should run well on any relatively modern 64-bit hardware with at least 4 GB of RAM, although 8 GB would be better.
New
This release introduces the LXQt 2.0 desktop and is the first Lubuntu version that is based on the Qt 6 toolkit. This move will improve theme adoption in applications built with Qt 6, although Qt 5 is still supported, so any applications that have not been updated to Qt 6 should still run as well. The Calamares installer that Lubuntu uses is a good example, as it is still based on Qt 5, although it should be updated to Qt 6 by the time of the next Lubuntu release, 25.04 in April, 2025.
Lubuntu 24.10 also brings a new SVG theme engine called Kvantum which is controlled by the Kvantum manager. Kvantum is free software under the GPL 3+ license and the lead developer is the same one responsible for the FeatherPad text editor, Pedram Pourang (user name: Tsu Jan) of Iran. Employing Kvantum was the best solution to multiple problems that cropped up in using the KDE Breeze theme in an LXQt environment. Kvantum allows for the creation of equivalent themes and, in fact, the new ones look much like the old ones although the Lubuntu Arc theme now has some optional variations available. Overall it works quite well, giving users a few new choices.
One thing that is not new in this release is the display server employed, which remains at X11. A Wayland-based version is not yet included due to some incompatibilities with LXQt 2.0. A Wayland option was originally planned for Lubuntu 24.04 LTS, with Wayland by default in this release, but it did not work out. LXQt 2.1 is expected to be included in the next release, Lubuntu 25.04, due out on 17 April 2025 and it should have full Wayland support.
Like all of the Ubuntu 24.10 family of releases, Lubuntu 24.10 uses Linux kernel 6.11 and systemd 256.5 as its initialization system. Also, like Ubuntu, Lubuntu has now been using systemd since its 15.04 release, making this the 20th release, in more than ten years with systemd. Remarkably there have been no issues noted in that time.
Settings
Lubuntu 24.10 has the code name “Oracular Oriole” and that means a new default Lubuntu oriole-themed wallpaper. While the resulting wallpaper is quite a work of art, I find it far too “busy” for my tastes, as icons just disappear into all of this (artistic) clutter. If you are of the same mind as I am, you can always swap it for the other oriole wallpaper provided called SDDM Oriole (for “Simple Desktop Display Manager”) which is a much cleaner and simpler design, or you can use the classic Lubuntu Friends-dark wallpaper which is another of the 20 wallpapers included. You can, of course, always use your own favorite wallpaper as well.
Other setting options include 19 window themes, 12 icon themes, 15 LXQt themes, two cursor themes, plus ten GTK3 and GTK2 themes, all of which add up to a lot of customization possibilities.
Applications
Some of the applications included with Lubuntu 24.10 are:
2048-qt 0.1.6 simple lightweight game* Blueman 2.4.3 bluetooth connector Discover Software Center 6.1.5 package management system FeatherPad 1.5.1 text editor Firefox 131.0 web browser ImageMagick 6.9.13.12 image editor Kcalc 24.08.1 calculator KDE partition manager 23.08.5 partition manager* LibreOffice 24.8.2 office suite, Qt interface version Lubuntu Update 1.1.0 software update notifier LXimage-Qt 2.0.1 image viewer LXQt Archiver 1.0.0 archive manager Noblenote 1.2.0 note taker* PCManFM-Qt 2.0.0 file manager PipeWire 1.2.4 audio controller qPDFview 0.5.0 PDF viewer Qlipper 5.1.2 clipboard manager* QTerminal 2.0.1 terminal emulator Qtransmission 4.0.6 BitTorrent client, Qt interface version Quassel 0.14.0 IRC client* ScreenGrab 2.8.0 screenshot tool Skanlite 23.08.5 scanning utility* Startup Disk Creator 0.3.17 (usb-creator-kde) USB boot disk maker* Systemd 256.4 init system VLC 3.0.21 media player Wget 1.24.5 command line webpage downloader XScreenSaver 6.08 screensaver and screen locker* * Indicates the same version as used in Lubuntu 24.04 LTS supplied as a Snap, so version depends on the upstream package manager
The only change to the application mix this time around is an unannounced switch of the default PDF viewer back to qPDFview from Okular. Okular had replaced qPDFview in the last release, Lubuntu 24.04 LTS.
LibreOffice 24.8.2 is supplied complete, missing only LibreOffice Base, the office suite's database application. Base is probably the least used LibreOffice component but, if it is needed, it can easily be installed from the repositories.
As in recent releases, Lubuntu 24.10 does not come with a graphical image editor, video editor, email client or web cam application, although there are good choices for these, along with many more applications in the repositories.
Conclusions
Lubuntu 24.10 is a good, solid release with just a few small changes over 24.04 LTS, that most users probably will not notice. It will be interesting to follow this development cycle and see if Wayland does indeed land in Lubuntu soon, as well as to catalog what other changes may appear along the way.
I think that for now most Lubuntu users will probably stick with 24.04 LTS and its three years of support, as there are not a lot of compelling reasons to jump in on 24.10 with only nine months of support.
External links
Official website: https://lubuntu.me/