Ubuntu 24.04 LTS “Noble Numbat” Beta released, powered by GNOME 46 and Linux Kernel 6.8

The Ubuntu team has announced the beta release of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS “Noble Numbat” packed with new features and enhancements. The release was delayed due to the xz/liblzma security incident.

The latest version comes with GNOME 46, the newest version of the popular desktop environment, powered by Linux Kernel 6.8. The Ubuntu Desktop Installer has also been updated with visual and functional improvements. Notably, a new Accessibility section allows users to tailor settings to their needs and preferences, and there's an option to import autoinstall configurations. Other options include experimental ZFS and TPM-backed full disk encryption.

The Ubuntu App Center has been enhanced with new features and now includes a graphical firmware update tool. Ubuntu 24.04 LTS also features Netplan 1.0, a declarative network management configuration tool, and an updated toolchain that consists of GCC 14, Python 3.12, OpenJDK 21, LLVM 18, Rust 1.76, Golang 1.22, and .NET 8.

Significantly, Ubuntu 24.04 will be the first LTS release to support the Raspberry Pi 5 with both ARM64 server and desktop images. The new release also addresses the Year 2038 problem on ARMhf by updating over a thousand packages to use a 64-bit value for time, allowing for time handling up to 292 billion years in the future.

All official Ubuntu flavors, including Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Cinnamon, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Unity, and Ubuntu Kylin, have also been promoted to the beta channel.