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I think it is fair to say that Ubuntu Unity has hit its stride. Its early days as a Linux distribution had a few false starts, ducks and weaves, but nowadays it functions really well and has a good look, with a stable suite of default applications. It even has a page about it on DistroWatch which is a sure sign that it “has arrived” in the Linux world. The latest Ubuntu Unity release is 24.10 which was released on 10 October, 2024, along with all of the other Ubuntu flavors. This is the first interim release of a new development cycle of three interim releases before the next long term support (LTS) version which will be Ubuntu Unity 26.04 LTS, due out in April, 2026. Because Ubuntu Unity 24.10 is an interim release, it comes with only nine months of support, running until July, 2025. Ubuntu Unity 24.10 is also the tenth release and its fifth as an Ubuntu “official flavor”. As was the case with the last release, Ubuntu Unity 24.04 LTS, this new version does not bring a lot that is new, as it seems like much of the developer effort has been going into the future requirement to get it Wayland-ready.
Installation I downloaded Ubuntu Unity 24.10 from the official source via BitTorrent. Once I had the ISO file, I did an SHA256 sum check on it from the command line to test the download integrity and it passed. The Ubuntu Unity 24.10 ISO file was a 3.7 GB download which makes it 200 MB bigger than the last release, an increase of 5%. I dropped the ISO file onto a USB stick equipped with Ventoy 1.0.99 and tested it from there. Ubuntu Unity is still not officially listed as being supported by Ventoy, but it works just fine. As always, Ventoy does all the hard work of unpacking the ISO file and making it work right. System requirements Ubuntu Unity does not specify any system requirements, but it is probably safe to assume that it is the same as Ubuntu 24.10 with a minimum of: 2 GHz dual-core processor 4 GB of RAM It should run on any modern 64-bit hardware designed for Windows 7 and newer.
New As the release announcement outlines, the development team has been spending most of their recent time working on getting the Lomiri desktop (formerly known as Unity 8) working right on Ubuntu Unity. This is a key future investment, as the Unity 7 desktop is dependent on the legacy X11 display server and the Linux world is slowly moving away from X11 to Wayland protocol-based display servers. This work has been taking place in a separate experimental project called Ubuntu Lomiri. There is a fresh test version available, Ubuntu Lomiri 24.10, which is officially described as “significantly improved” over the last release. The eventual goal is to merge this work into Ubuntu Unity main, as Ubuntu Lomiri is not intended as a new standalone Ubuntu “flavor”. Meanwhile, as a fresh release Ubuntu Unity 24.10 itself has only a few things that are new to kick off this development cycle. For boot-up, the unity-greeter package has been replaced by the lightdm-gtk-greeter, due to some bugs encountered when it was used in conjunction with lightdm. The last release had moved to using the Calamares installer and 24.10 continues with that, with some improvements incorporated. Not announced, this release also includes the Kvantum Manager theme engine, although it is not clear how it is used within Ubuntu Unity. As with all the Ubuntu 24.10 family of releases, the included Linux kernel is 6.11 and the initialization system is systemd 256.5. Systemd has been part of Ubuntu Unity since its inception and works well. The Unity 7.7 desktop version used in the last release is also used in this one. It continues to work flawlessly, too.
Settings As in the past, this release continues to have its settings spread out between the regular settings menu, the panel brush icon, and the included Unity Tweak Tool. Once you find them, they all work just fine. 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 window themes, Yaru and Yaru-dark. The settings menu now has 16 accent colors to choose from, while the brush icon has ten. Ubuntu Unity continues to offer a lot of user customization options. This differentiates it from mainstream Ubuntu with its very limited choices. This 24.10 release is code named “Oracular Oriole” and so there is a nice, new default oriole-themed wallpaper. Also provided are 14 other wallpapers, seven of which have orioles on them. One new wallpaper included this time is the Ubuntu 20th anniversary “Warty Warthog” one. No, this is not Ubuntu Unity's 20th anniversary, but it is the mainstream Ubuntu's and that is obviously worth celebrating! Ubuntu Unity as a distribution is actually five years old now, while the Unity interface has been around for 14 years, having been introduced in 2010 in the Ubuntu 10.10 netbook edition.
Applications Some of the applications included with Ubuntu Unity 24.10 are: Archive Manager (File Roller) 44.3 file archiver Atril 1.26.2 PDF viewer* Cheese 44.1 webcam application* CUPS 2.4.10 printing system Document Scanner (Simple Scan) 46.0 optical scanner* Firefox 131.0 web browser** GDebi 0.9.5.7 .deb package installer* Gnome Disks 46.1 disk manager Gnome Screenshot 41.0 screenshot tool* Gnome Terminal 3.54.0 terminal emulator Gparted 1.5.0 partition editor* Image Viewer (Eye of MATE) 1.26.1 image viewer* LibreOffice 24.8.2 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 0.32.7 photo manager Stacer 1.1.0 system monitor Startup Disk Creator 0.3.17 USB ISO writer* Synaptic 0.91.3 package management system* Systemd 256.5 init system Transmission 4.0.6 bittorrent client Unity 7.7.0 interface* Unity Tweak Tool 0.0.7 settings manager* VLC 3.0.21 media player XTerm 394-1 terminal emulator * indicates same application version as used in Ubuntu Unity 24.04 LTS ** supplied as a snap, so version depends on the upstream package manager
Not mentioned in the release announcement is that the Stacer system monitor has been added. Ubuntu Unity 23.10 used the GNOME System Monitor but it was omitted in 24.04 LTS for unexplained reasons. With the adoption of Stacer, Ubuntu Unity has a default system monitor once again. The standard file manager remains the Cinnamon desktop’s Nemo. It works very well and has a lot of user-controlled settings which allows for good customization. It still lacks bulk file renaming in this implementation, however, so installing a stand-alone bulk file renamer such as GPRename is recommended. LibreOffice 24.8.2 is supplied complete, lacking only the LibreOffice Base database application - which can be installed from the Ubuntu repositories, if desired.
Conclusions Ubuntu Unity 24.10 is pretty much a flawless release and includes a plethora of user customization options. In use, it works well and comes with a good suite of default applications. The fact that this first interim release incorporates only a few very minor improvements tends to telegraph that this release cycle will not bring any big changes. I think most current Ubuntu Unity users will be happy with this, as it already works well these days (“if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”). I will be keeping an eye on the Ubuntu Lomiri project as work progresses. It will be interesting to see if and when Lomiri gets merged into Ubuntu Unity as a means of bringing Wayland to Ubuntu Unity, and how that all works out. External links Official website: https://ubuntuunity.org/