Canonical has just released the latest version of its Linux-based operating system, Ubuntu. The new version number is 24.04, and Canonical previously codenamed it Noble Numbat.
This new version includes the latest Linux 6.8 kernel. Canonical says it includes “improved syscall performance, nested KVM support in ppc64el, and access to the new bcachefs filesystem that landed.”
Among its new features, Ubuntu 24.04 is configured so that frame pointers are enabled by default for 64-bit architectures. Canonical quoted Brendan Gregg, a computer performance expert and fellow at Intel, about what this means to users of his blog post:
Frame pointers allow for more complete CPU profiling and off-processor profiling. The performance gains these can provide far outweigh the relatively small loss in performance. Ubuntu enabling frame pointers by default would be a huge win for performance engineering and the default developer experience.
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS also fully supports .NET 8, Microsoft’s latest version of its open source development platform officially launched in November 2023. Jeremy Winter, corporate vice president for Microsoft’s Azure Cloud Native, is quoted as saying:
Ubuntu is a certified Linux distribution on Microsoft Azure, and an important component for many of Microsoft’s technologies, including .NET, Windows Subsystem for Linux, Azure Kubernetes Service, and Azure Secret Computing. Microsoft and Canonical have a close engineering relationship, from Azure update infrastructure to developer tools, especially .NET 8 which has been part of the Noble Numbat release since day one.
Also, the new version comes with Rust 1.75 along with a “simpler Rust toolchain snap framework” that Canonical says will enable future versions of Rust to be released as part of Ubuntu 24.04.
The release of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is also notable because it is the first LTS release where the installation technology for Ubuntu Desktop is the same as that available for Ubuntu Server. The blog post explains:
This means desktop administrators can now use image customization tools like auto-install and cloud-init to create tailored experiences for their developers. The user interface has also received a makeover, with a modern design built into Flutter.
Canonical says Ubuntu is the first, and currently, the only Linux-based operating system to support secret computing for GPUs like Nvidia H100 Tensor Core in the public cloud. It offers more security for these servers and is now available in preview on Microsoft Azure.
Starting with this new release, Ubuntu Pro subscribers who purchase the Legacy Support Add-on will be able to receive a total of 12 years of updates and support for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. The Noble Numbat edition will still get five years of free support through the main Ubuntu repository.
You can download the new version From the official Ubuntu website. You can also download the Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Noble Numbat wallpapers as well.