As another year transitions from present to past, I want1 to recap the notable new features, changes, updates and innovations Ubuntu saw over the past 12 months.
And there was a fair bit: we got a noble new long-term support release in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, plus an opulent follow up in the form of Ubuntu 24.10, Canonical focused on ensuring Ubuntu stays the forefront of next-gen tech, and even snaps started to suck less! ;)
For a round up of 10 cool things Ubuntu got, did, or committed to in 2024—listed in no particular order, lest anyone question my priorities— read on!
Ubuntu in 2024: 10 Top Changes
1. Ubuntu’s RISC-V Embrace
When I think of 2024 and the things Ubuntu did which left me feeling excited, Canonical’s push to make it the de facto Linux distro for RISC-V is certainly up there.
RISC-V is a free, open-source processor spec (think blueprint) that anyone can use, change, and improve on to create their own computing chips without the need to pay licensing fees or royalties (as with ARM).
RISC-V could do for hardware what Linux did for software – and Ubuntu is eager to help
Being fundamentally different to traditional processors, RISC-V offers the potential to create low-energy but high-performance and task-optimised chips – albeit with a lot of that potential as-yet untapped.
With newer, faster RISC-V chips emerging, and Linux kernel RISC-V support improving at a clip, Canonical is feeling confident about the platform. It wants to position Ubuntu as the de-facto Linux distribution for RISC-V – and this year it did just that.
Through 2024 a slew of RISC-V devices launched with Ubuntu support out-of-the-box, including more single-board computers, a 14-inch laptop, and a $199 10.1-inch tablet from DeepComputing.
In November, Framework Computing launched a drop-in RISC-V mainboard upgrade for their phenomenally popular Framework Laptop 13 (and yes, it can run Ubuntu).
RISC-V performance remains modest (at best) but the opportunities the open-source processor offer are clear. The more developers and community enthusiasts able to access devices to trial, test, and tinker with, the faster RISC-V will improve.
So it’s great that Ubuntu is there already, at the forefront, leading the charge.
2. Provisioning Faster Installs
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS arrived in April with a powerful new feature in its Flutter-based OS installer, a feature aimed at furthering Canonical’s vision of “provisioning” — a fancy way of saying automating installs, basically.
With provisioning, users and system administrators simply give the installer a .yaml configuration file (local or remote). This file lists the options, preferences, drives, etc the install should use, allowing similar setups on fleets of machines – all from one file.
Provisioning is just one part of a bigger rethink of the Ubuntu installation experience. Other changes mooted include moving user account creation to after installation (like OEM installs do) to reducing the number of steps, and the time it takes, needed to install Ubuntu.
While provisioning won’t sit at the top of most home user’s lists of wants it proves Canonical remains committed to innovating and improving the Ubuntu desktop experience, not simply repackaging and riding innovation done by others, like some critics contend.
3. HEIC/HEIF Image Support
Amongst the (many) new Ubuntu 24.04 LTS features was support for viewing and opening HEIF/HEIC image files. Not the most dramatic change, and one I dare say most people won’t have noticed, but an important one all the same.
HEIF (High Efficiency Image File Format) isn’t a common web format (so not used for memes, which make up 2/3 of all images found in an average Ubuntu user’s ~/Pictures folder[citation needed]) it is far from being niche.
After all, HEIC/HEIF is the format photos taken on modern iPhones and Samsung devices are saved to (if using the stock camera app).
Preinstalling a small library means Ubuntu users can see HEIF/HEIC image thumbnail previews in the Nautilus file manager, and open and edit images in a range of GTK apps, including Eye of GNOME image viewer, Shotwell photo manager, and the GIMP image editor.
As small quality-of-life improvements go, letting users work with photos taken on their phones without the need to pass them through an image converter first is a textbook example.
4. Linux Kernel Cadence Change
Ubuntu made a big kernel change earlier this year. New versions of Ubuntu now ship with most recent kernel release in development at the time of their release, even if that kernel version is not yet stable.
Or to let them say it in their own words: “Ubuntu will now ship the absolute latest available version of the upstream Linux kernel at the specified Ubuntu release freeze date, even if upstream is still in Release Candidate (RC) status.”
Prior to this chance, Ubuntu would (usually) ship the most recent stable kernel version at the time the distro’s kernel freeze milestone hit, which was often a mere week or so before a new stable Linux kernel. As a result, Ubuntu often shipped with an older kernel.
As of Ubuntu 24.10, it now packages the latest kernel in development. So we know Ubuntu 25.04 will ship with Linux kernel 6.14, as that will be the kernel version in development when Ubuntu kernel freeze hits in March, 2025.
5. Better Gaming For Everyone
Ubuntu gamers saw a big performance boost when running big-name titles on the distro this year, as Ubuntu developers finally agreed to raise the distro’s virtual memory mapping limit.
This minor sounding change delivered a big impact on the performance of games like Hogwarts Legacy, Payday 2, Counter-Strike 2, DayZ, and Star Citizen, games which had previously struggled to run (or even open) as Ubuntu set the value of vm_max_map_count too low.
Following user requests the distro bumped the memory mapping limit to a level that doesn’t result in performance bottlenecks during gaming, but not so high it impacts the performance of the system as a whole.
It was a good year for gaming on Ubuntu elsewhere too.
Canonical’s Steam snap saw improvements in startup times and general performance, with the latter due to a relaxation of the distro’s stringent App Armor sandboxing restrictions for Steam, permitting it wider access to files outside its sandbox than other snaps.
6. GNOME Feature Fest
This year we got a pair of new Ubuntu releases, each release brimming with improvements, tweaks, and new features courtesy of updates to the GNOME desktop — features that make any distro offering it more enjoyable and productive to use.
GNOME 46 in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS let us access Microsoft OneDrive files in Nautilus, revamped notifications with a cleaner look, and improved performance during GNOME Shell search tasks so results appear faster, using fewer resources – plus more.
GNOME 47 in Ubuntu 24.10 brought an improved Nautilus with sidebar customisation, new network and remote mount UX, and the ability to function as a file picker in other apps. We also got hardware-encoded screen recording and persistent remote logins.
That is but a mere surface scratch on a mountain of marvellous changes both GNOME releases came with, making 2024 not just a golden year for users of GNOME, but of Ubuntu too.
7. 20th Anniversary Flourishes
Ubuntu turned 20 years old in 2024. Yes, 20 — its first release occurred back in October 2004 with the launch of Ubuntu 4.10 ‘Warty Warthog’.
In honour of that anniversary, Ubuntu 24.10 offers a number of nostalgic nods to the past, including a return of the original Ubuntu startup chime (not the one you think), a ‘warty’ brown accent colour, and a remastered version of the very first Ubuntu wallpaper.
Celebrations outside the distro itself felt muted. I was expecting a touch more bombast given the occasion. Ubuntu is the world’s most popular desktop Linux distribution, and reaching 20 years is no mean feat.
Still, a huge party was held at the Ubuntu Summit, which took place in The Netherlands in early October. By all accounts a noble time was had by those fortunate to attend.
8. Ubuntu + NVIDIA + Wayland
This year Canonical’s engineers made the decision to make Ubuntu default to Wayland on NVIDIA GPUs having previously decided to fallback to Xorg/X11 on setups (owing to NVIDIA’s long-standing Wayland dramas).
With major upstream changes improving the day-to-day experience of using Wayland with NVIDIA GPUs, and momentum behind the display server ever-increasing, a decision was made to switch —a good decision it seems given the lack of complaints I’ve heard…
It’s swell to see Wayland being used by more people, allowing them to benefit from its technical, security, and cool-kid-club benefits.
Of course, those needing Xorg/X11 still have to option of using it as it continues to come preinstalled as a login option for everyone. Though aged, Ubuntu is likely to keep the X display server in the Ubuntu archives for many years to come.
Just a shame that when I boot into Ubuntu 24.10 on my Raspberry Pi 5 it now defaults to X, despite the fact that when I boot into Ubuntu 24.04 it defaults to Wayland. One step forward…
9. Desktop Security Center
Although arriving later than planned, and not actually equipped to do much yet, Ubuntu’s new Security Centre app arrived as a preinstalled app with October’s release of Ubuntu 24.10.
It will, one day, serve as a one-stop shop for security management on Ubuntu, and perhaps offer GUI firewall controls.
For now, Security Center only has one option, which is to enable Ubuntu’s new (and experimental) Prompting Client integration. This security measure for snap apps prompts users for permission whenever a snap tries to access something outside of its sandbox.
In use, prompting is majorly annoying (think Windows Vista’s endless dialogs). It will improve by the time Canonical rolls it out to all, and the goal of giving us fine-grained control over actions software make is I guess, sort of the point of sandboxed formats like snap.
10. DEBs Installs in App Center
When Ubuntu swapped it’s GNOME Software fork Ubuntu Software for a home-grown, Flutter-built App Center centred on showcasing snaps, plenty of people rejoiced — though mainly because it meant they’d be getting half their RAM back (a joke, but also not?).
One ongoing pain-point to the replacement was that it couldn’t install DEB packages users downloaded themselves, things like Google Chrome, Discord, Slack, etc.
Some saw it as a regression. Every version of Ubuntu, which is a DEB-based distro, supported this until App Center was introduced.
Others argued that letting users install 3rd-party DEBs set a dangerous precedent about lax security practices, with users able to install apps from ‘untrusted’ sources (despite Ubuntu having supported it for its entire existence without any issues).
Reason won out; this year Canonical fixed the regression.
Now, Ubuntu users can once again double-click on a DEB package of an app they downloaded and install it using a GUI, just like they could for the previous 19 years – no need to research, learn, or consult a mystic to learn about Gdebi or the right dpkg commands to run.
What was your highlight?
Those are the 10 things which came to my mind when I sat down to write this recap, but they’re far from the only ace changes, innovations, and new features Ubuntu gained this year.
Help keep the positivity going by sharing your Ubuntu highlights down in the comments — I’m interested to hear what you loved the most!
- To be honest, I hate doing ‘best of’ yearly stuff like this. Write it too soon in December and it could miss something good out. Leave it too late and well, it’s nearly 2025 and no-one cares about the previous year – myself included! ↩︎