Ubuntu Linux update brings performance boosts, tool updates

Canonical has released Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, aka “Noble Numbat,” a new Long Term Support release of the popular Linux distribution that brings performance enhancements and toolchain updates for developers.

Announced April 25 and downloadable from ubuntu.com, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS offers Linux 6.8 kernel capabilities with improved syscall performance, nested KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) support on ppc64el (IBM PowerPC), and access to the new beachefs file system. Ubuntu 24.04 LTS has merged low-latency kernel features into the default kernel, reducing kernel task scheduling delays, Canonical said. The release also enables frame pointers by default on 64-bit architectures, giving performance engineers access to accurate flame graphs when systems are profiled for troubleshooting and optimization. Frame pointers offer more complete CPU profiling and off-CPU profiling, according to Intel.

For developers, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS includes Python 3.12, Ruby 3.2, PHP 8.3, and Go 1.22 and enhances support for .NET, Java, and Rust. .NET 8 will be supported on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and Ubuntu 22.04 LTS for the life cycle of both releases. .NET support also has been extended to the IBM System Z platform. For Java developers, JDK 21 becomes the default release in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS while Java 17, Java 11, and Java 8 also are supported. Ubuntu 24.04 LTS ships with Rust 1.75.

Ubuntu Desktop features new management tools, and now uses the same installer as Ubuntu Server. Image customization tools such as autoinstall and cloud-init can be used to tailor developer experiences. And starting with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, Ubuntu on Windows Subsystem for Linux now supports cloud-init to enable customization and standardization across developer estates.

For security, Ubuntu now offers confidential virtual machines across the Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Amazon Web Services cloud platforms. Ubuntu also supports confidential GPUs on the public cloud, starting with a preview on Azure. For Canonical enterprise customers, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS receives 12 years of security maintenance and support. As a Long Term Support release, the release gets five years of free security maintenance on the main Ubuntu repository.