Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, Noble Numbat, overhauls its installation and app experience
Enlarge / Ubuntu has come a long way over nearly 20 years, to the point where you can now render 3D Ubuntu coffee mugs and family pictures in a video announcing the 2024 spring release. (credit: Canonical)
History might consider the most important aspect of Ubuntu 24.04 to be something that it doesn’t have: vulnerabilities to the XZ backdoor that nearly took over the global Linux scene.
Betas, and the final release of Ubuntu 24.04, a long-term support (LTS) release of the venerable Linux distribution, were delayed, as backing firm Canonical worked to rebuild every binary included in the release. xz Utils, an almost ubiquitous data-compression package on Unix-like systems, had been compromised through a long-term and elaborate supply-chain attack, discovered only because a Microsoft engineer noted some oddities with SSH performance on a Debian system. Ubuntu, along with just about every other regularly updating software platform, had a lot of work to do this month.
Canonical’s Ubuntu 24.04 release video, noting 20 years of Ubuntu releases. I always liked the brown.
What is actually new in Ubuntu 24.04, or “Noble Numbat?” Quite a bit, especially if you’re the type who sticks to LTS releases. The big new changes are a very slick new installer, using the same Subiquity back-end as the Server releases, and redesigned with a whole new front-end in Flutter. ZFS encryption is back as a default install option, along with hardware-backed (i.e. TPM) full-disk encryption, plus more guidance for people looking to dual-boot with Windows setups and BitLocker. Netplan 1.0 is the default network configuration tool now. And the default installation is “Minimal,” as introduced in 23.10.
