Canonical has just released the latest version of its Linux-based OS, Ubuntu. The new version number is 24.04, and Canonical previously gave it the code name Noble Numbat.
This new version includes the latest Linux 6.8 kernel. Canonical says it includes "improved syscall performance, nested KVM support on ppc64el, and access to the newly landed bcachefs filesystem."
Among its new features, Ubuntu 24.04 is set up so that frame pointers are enabled as the default for 64-bit architectures. Canonical quoted Brendan Gregg, Computer Performance Expert and Fellow at Intel, about what this means for users in its blog post:
Frame pointers allow more complete CPU profiling and off-CPU profiling. The performance wins that these can provide far outweigh the comparatively tiny loss in performance. Ubuntu enabling frame pointers by default will 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 that officially launched in November 2023. Jeremy Winter, the Corporate Vice President for Microsoft"s Azure Cloud Native, is quoted as saying:
Ubuntu is an endorsed Linux distro on Microsoft Azure, and an important component for many of Microsoft’s technologies, including .NET, Windows Subsystem for Linux, Azure Kubernetes Service, and Azure confidential computing. Microsoft and Canonical have a close engineering relationship spanning everything from update infrastructure in Azure to developer tooling, notably .NET 8 which is part of the Noble Numbat release from day one.
Also, the new version comes with Rust 1.75 along with a "simpler Rust toolchain snap framework" which Canonical says will allow 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 such LTS release where the Ubuntu Desktop installer technology is the same that"s available for Ubuntu Server. The blog post explains:
This means that desktop administrators can now use image customisation tools like autoinstall and cloud-init to create tailored experiences for their developers. The user interface has also received a makeover, with a modern design built in Flutter.
Canonical says that Ubuntu the first, and at the moment, only Linux-based OS to support confidential computing for GPUs like the Nvidia H100 Tensor Core on the public cloud. It offers more security for those servers, and its now available via a preview on Microsoft Azure.
Starting with this new version, Ubuntu Pro subscribers who purchase the Legacy Support add-on will be able to get a total of 12 years of updates and support for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. The Noble Numbat release will still get five years of free support via 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.