Microsoft has announced that Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is now available as an Azure Virtual Machine through the Azure Marketplace. The announcement comes a few weeks after Canonical launched this version of Ubuntu to the public.
As a long-term support release, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS will be supported by Canonical for five years until 2029, for most users. The support can be extended out even further to 12 years by registering your computer with Ubuntu Pro.
In a separate announcement on the same day, Canonical said that its Ubuntu Pro 24.04 LTS operating system is now also available on Google Cloud with boot speed improvements, seamless integration, and optimisation for the Google Cloud infrastructure.
Below are some notable improvements in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS:
Linux kernel
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS includes the new 6.8 Linux kernel that brings many new features.
Detailed changes are reported in the Noble Kernel Release Notes post.
systemd v255.4
The init system was updated to systemd v255.4. See the upstream changelog 234 for more information about individual features.
.NET
With the introduction of .NET 8, Ubuntu is taking a significant step forward in supporting the .NET community. .NET 8 will be fully supported on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and 22.04 LTS for the entire lifecycle of both releases. This enables developers to upgrade their applications to newer .NET versions before upgrading their Ubuntu release. Starting with 24.04 LTS the .NET support has also been extended to the IBM System Z platform.
.NET 6 and .NET 7 packages with limited support are available via a PPA.
To learn more about Ubuntu on Azure Virtual Machines, head over to the Azure Marketplace listing where you can read more about the product see the available plans, and read ratings and reviews.
While Ubuntu is pretty popular in corporate settings, it"s also used widely in homes for personal use. Before this latest release, I argued that Fedora Silverblue 40, which also came out in April, would be the better choice for home users, you can read more about that here.