If you’re an Ubuntu user. You can be excited about this new LTS (Long Term Support) iteration christened Noble Numbat. Also known by its release number 24.04. This LTS release will be supported for five years throughout June 2029.
Should I Upgrade Now?
TL;DR: If you’re running 22.04, wait until at least 24.04.1 planned for release on August 15, 2024.
Only users of 23.10 (non LTS) are advised to upgrade now.
Fresh desktop installs are advised to slowly start rolling out 24.04 in most situations but check out known issues further down. For fresh server installs it seems wiser to await the first point release in August.
Overall bitcreed happily recommends users to try out 24.04 on non infrastructure-critical machines as a fresh-install. As with any release, there will be a number of issues that will be addressed shortly. As with previous releases, it is very likely that attempting an upgrade from 22.04 to 24.04 now will not be as smooth as expected and should only be attempted by professional Linux users with command-line experience around dpkg and disk snapshot system tools to revert the process if needed. A downgrade is never supported.
Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, does not consider 24.04 ready for LTS until the release of 24.04.1:
If you need Long Term Support, we recommend you use Ubuntu 22.04 LTS until 24.04.1 is released. https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/noble-numbat-release-notes/39890
For fresh installs on critical and/or exposed infrastructure, bitcreed strongly recommends to stick with 22.04 for at least until the first point release. We even recommend waiting for the second one if you can.
Noteworthy Changes
Read on for a snapshot view of changes (and non-changes) along with some of our views.
Default Desktop Selection now “minimal”
We very much welcome the change of the default desktop selection to minimal which comes as less clutter to most users and a more sleek experience.
Note that Libre Office is not part of the minimal selection but can of course be installed separately. If you’re upgrading from a previous version, fear not for those packages will naturally be upgraded along with the rest of your system.
Linux Kernel
Changes from 5.15 in 22.04 to 6.8. Details are available here for the technical reader:
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/introducing-kernel-6-8-for-the-24-04-noble-numbat-release/41958
Increased use of Snap
It seems that in the name of enhanced sandboxing and security, 24.04 brings another push towards deeper usage of snaps and away from debian packages. While at bitcreed we still love Ubuntu as a distribution, we feel that this devalues the whole distribution because there’s always different ways of installing a package and it’s becoming harder to track which way what package is installed. While we support competition in Open Source software, it seems that outside the Ubuntu world, snaps are generally rare and flatpak already provides a similar feature set.
The most common snap package in Ubuntu is Firefox. If you’re like us and prefer a deb based Firefox browser, the Mozilla Team PPA already has a noble numbat package available at http://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/mozillateam/ppa/ubuntu/
What Stays the Same
Not everything changes and we obviously welcome stable software to remain stable.
Java
The default Java installation is still the TCK certified OpenJDK 21.
Docker
Docker (package name docker.io) currently comes in at version 24.0.7 - not a big change from 22.04’s shipped version 24.0.5, so expect docker containers to continue running smoothly.
Known Issues
Be advised of potential pitfalls with non-English setups:
The Live Session of the new Ubuntu Desktop installer is not localized. It is still possible to perform a non-English installation using the new installer, but internet access at install time is required to download the language packs.
Also check out other known issues for the Desktop flavor on the release page: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/noble-numbat-release-notes/39890#ubuntu-desktop-104
Especially that Upgrades from previous versions:
It was identified that dropping the libglib2.0-0 transitional package can help apt do things in the correct order. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/glib2.0/+bug/2063221
End of Life for Previous LTS Versions
Users of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS can continue to enjoy LTS support for another year but should start evaluating the update process to 22.04 LTS. It is not recommended to skip an LTS version in the update process and go from 20.04 straight to 24.04 while skipping 22.04.
Ubuntu 14.04 is seeing it’s End of Life this month of April 2024 (Standard Support already ended in 2019).
You can Count on bitcreed
As your reliable partner for Linux solutions, bitcreed has experience with every single LTS version since the Warty Warthog, the very first Ubuntu Release in October 2004 and currently runs Ubuntu on desktops, servers and raspberry-pi type embedded devices.
For most users, we only recommend LTS versions but we’re happy to help and assist you with any Linux endeavor anytime. Send us an email or give us a call.
