[Ubuntu Weather][50th]Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, the first LTS in two years, has been released! Introducing the changes! – PC Watch

On April 25, 2024, the first LTS (Long Term Support version) in two years will be released. Ubuntu 24.04 LTS ‘ was released. This time, I would like to introduce the new features and changes of 24.04, as well as stories about the difficulties encountered during the development period.

By the way, I’m saying that it has been released, but as of this writing, it has not been released yet. In the case of Ubuntu, if it’s “released on April 25th,” it will generally be released by “the morning of April 26th Japan time,” so it should probably have been released. If it hasn’t been released by April 27th, the publication date of this article, something serious has happened, so please be patient and wait.

Long-term support version used by many users

First “Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Let me explain the position of “. As introduced in the first part of this series, one of the features of Ubuntu is Time-based release “is.

The current version of Ubuntu will be released at the following times.

• Released twice a year, in April and October
• The version number is “YY.MM” using the last two digits of the Western calendar year and the month.
• Each release is supported for 9 months
• Once every two years, in April of even-numbered years,Long Term Support (LTS)” to be released.
• LTS support period is 5 years (up to 12 years including paid support)
• Security updates will be provided during the support period

In this way, Ubuntu has a clear release date and support period, and has maintained this mechanism for nearly 20 years since the release of 4.10 in 2004, with one exception (6.06 in 2006). It has grown to become a widely used Linux distribution for applications all the way to enterprise servers.

Now, it may seem hard to believe, but this year is 2024. Although 2023 may not be over for some readers, unfortunately, according to the calendar, it is 2024. No matter how much we time-leap, we cannot change the reality of 2024. In other words, it is time to release the long-term support version for the first time in two years.

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS will be supported for 5 years. In other words, it can be used until 2029. You should think that you can continue to use it not only until the next LTS, 26.04, but also the next LTS, 28.04, is released.

Furthermore, if you install Ubuntu Pro, which is a paid support service (you can use it for free on up to 5 devices if you create an Ubuntu account), you can extend the lifespan by 5 years until 2034. Recently, we have been able to extend the period by 2 years (total of 12 years). Legacy Support ‘ was also announced. Since this is a completely paid service, I don’t think it would be very common for individuals to install it, but it can be used until 2036 at most.

In any case, recent Ubuntu users often “only use LTS.” While Ubuntu offers upgrades between releases, it also supports jump-start upgrades from the last LTS release.

For example, the current release of 24.04 is a direct upgrade from the previous LTS, 22.04. Upgrading requires a certain amount of determination and preparation, so you’ll be happy if you can continue using it for at least two years.

Therefore, this time, we will mainly introduce new features for 22.04, assuming that users of 22.04 will upgrade to 24.04. By the way, LTS is supported for 5 years, so support for 20.04 users will end in about one year. I’d like to consider migrating soon.

New features in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

Now, let’s introduce the new features of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. Ubuntu has a custom of giving codenames during development. The code name for 24.04 is “ Noble Numbat “is. For this reason, 24.04 is often called “noble”, and recently wallpapers are often derived from the code name. In this wallpaper, the word “noble” is represented by a crown, and there is a flea anteater inside the crown, giving it a stylish look.

Numbat is a species endemic to Australia, and is apparently not related to anteaters other than eating termites.

Focusing on desktop-related features, the major changes from Ubuntu 22.04 LTS are as follows.

• New installer
• Review of software installed by default
• Add app center
• Revamped quick settings panel
• Tile-like window management

Let’s look at them in order.

Ubuntu has been around since 2006. Ubiquity It used an installer called “. This was responsible for Ubuntu’s “easy to install” feature. Although I have been using Ubiquity for nearly 20 years, modifying it to suit the times, the code base has become outdated and it has become difficult to add new features.

Therefore, in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (from 23.10 to be exact), we decided to completely rework it using Flutter and adopt a new installer that standardizes the server and installation process. By the way, the name (and code repository) has changed from time to time, and may change in the future, so we can only call it a “new installer.”

New installer start screen

Can now update itself during installation

You can now select the Live environment after configuring the network settings.

Automatic installation is a new feature.Useful for trial and error with virtual machines, etc.

Be careful with installation options.If you want to do it the same way as before, you need “extended selection”

This installation option is “Review the software installed by default.”

First, the “default selection” installation option is set to something similar to “minimal installation.” All you need is a web browser and terminal app installed for now, and other settings are for those who want to add them later. Recently, office tools are increasingly being used from web browsers, so it can no longer be said that they are “essential.” It seems that this measure also takes into consideration the future “Immutable Desktop”, but I will discuss this on another occasion.

On the other hand, “Extended selection” contains office tools. Specifically, these include LibreOffice, mailers, and music/video players. All of these can be said to be standard tools that come in handy during work. After installation, if you want to be able to use the software without having to install the software again, it would be a good idea to select “Advanced selection”.

Not only the installer for Ubuntu itself, but also the store app. app center ” has been reimplemented in Flutter. The previous “clunky” feel has been slightly eliminated, and the interface has become simpler.

App Center introduced from 23.10

The “Quick Settings Panel” is an operation panel that is displayed by clicking on the various indicator areas at the top right of the screen. Frequently used settings such as Wi-Fi/Bluetooth connections and switching sound devices can be changed from here with a single touch without having to open the settings screen.

Easy settings are possible from the quick panel

“Tile-like window management” is a function for arranging windows in a tiled manner, and it is probably most similar to the “snap function” in modern Windows. In Linux, there has always been a group called “tiled window managers,” which emphasizes using the desktop as efficiently as possible and quickly arranging and resizing windows. You can now use this subset of tiling functionality on Ubuntu by installing GNOME Shell’s Tiling Assistant extension from scratch.

For example, if you drag a window to the top right of the screen, it will automatically scale to the top-right quarter size.

When you resize another window to the right half, you can also choose which window to make the left half of. However, currently only simple functions are available. Also, keyboard shortcuts cannot be changed. Let’s list some typical shortcuts. “Super key” generally means the Windows key.

• Super + Right Arrow: Resize window to right half size
• Super + left arrow: Resize window to left half size
• Super + up arrow: Maximize window
• Super + Down Arrow: Restore window size
• Super + numeric keypad 1-9: position the window to the location corresponding to the numeric keypad position

The last key, for example, if you press “9”, will be placed in the upper right quarter of the size. You can also resize the tiled window by dragging its borders.

In fact, the true value of tile-type operations is demonstrated by making full use of keyboard shortcuts. Tiling Assistant also has a mechanism to change keyboard shortcuts, but the UI for this is not available at this time. If you want to change it, install the configuration tool as follows.

$ sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-prefs
$ gnome-shell-extension-prefs

All you have to do is click on the icon on the far right of “Ubuntu Tiling Assistant” and select “Settings”.

Keyboard shortcuts can now be set

There are also a number of other major features below, such as “The configuration format of the APT repository has been changed” and “Kernel drivers can now be written in Rust.” These updates essentially make new releases faster, more capable, and more secure. Of course, new bugs may be introduced for the same reasons, resulting in lower performance on certain devices. Please keep in mind that not everyone can be happy in this area.

Notes on upgrading

Here are some things to keep in mind when upgrading from older releases. Please refer to the second half of Part 5 for general information. There are four points to keep in mind:

• Read the release notes first
• Let’s keep a backup
• We recommend reinstalling if possible.
• Finally, read the release notes again.

In the Ubuntu release notes, in addition to “This new feature!” Already discovered, dangerous problems ‘ is published. If you’re planning to upgrade, I highly, highly recommend reading this first. in particular” Known defects This is after the item titled “. In the middle of the release notes, there are sometimes long printer-related lectures or feature introductions filled with technical terminology for IBM mainframes, but you can skip that.

The Japanese version will be released within a few days to a week after its release. If you are in a hurry, you may want to read the English version.

Also, if you are currently using Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, please refer to “ point release We will have to wait until the 24.04 version (24.04.1) of “24.04.1” is released. This is an installation media that is released approximately once every six months with various security updates applied. The first point release will be released relatively quickly, approximately from the end of July to the beginning of August. Please think of this as a complete fix for various issues that will be found after the LTS release.

In fact, Ubuntu’s update manager will not notify you that it can be upgraded to 24.04 until the first point release (24.04.1) is released.

However, if there are few people using LTS before the point release, it means that it will not be possible to identify defects. Especially if you plan to use 24.04 for work, please install 24.04 in a test environment as soon as possible and report any problems.

Story about the difficulties of this release

Finally, a little technical story. This is a story that doesn’t concern ordinary people.

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS was a rare “difficult birth” in recent years. In the first place, even during development, the period during which the installer worked properly was extremely short. Even just before the beta version was released, there was a situation where I couldn’t understand why, “The installer completes, but in fact, almost no packages are installed.”

In this release, we have a major issue: Dealing with the year 2038 problem ” existed. The Year 2038 problem is a problem that arises from the fact that 32-bit versions of Linux/Unix OSes, including Ubuntu, have historically treated the internal representation of time information (time_t type) as a signed 32-bit integer. is.

In Linux/Unix OS, the number of seconds since “January 1, 1970 0:00:00” is stored in time_t, so if it is a signed 32 bit, it will be “2” since 1970. It overflows (resulting in a negative value) around noon on January 19, 2038, Japan time, when ^31-1” seconds have passed. In other words, the time after that cannot be handled correctly. For this reason, the “Year 2038 Problem” has long been mentioned as a major problem for Linux/Unix OSes.

Speaking of “2038,” considering that the maximum support deadline for 24.04 is 2036, I feel like it doesn’t need to be supported in this release. However, as of April 2036, it is a matter of “less than three years left,” and I feel that it is somewhat inconvenient that the calendar for three years from now cannot be displayed properly. Most importantly, Debian will begin full-fledged support from 2023. Therefore, it became necessary for Ubuntu to incorporate these support along with other Debian fixes in preparation for the release of 24.04.

The problem was that the response was slower than expected. It was initially hoped that the issue would be resolved to some extent in January, but even in March, a large number of packages were still “waiting to build” and were blocking the build of other packages. I was depressed.

In fact, in the currently mainstream 64-bit OS, time_t is a signed 64-bit integer. In other words, it can be safely used for another 300 billion years, so there is no need to worry unless it is a long-lived species. The problem is that the image is made for old Raspberry Pi. Since a 32-bit version is also available in parallel with the 64-bit version, the year 2038 problem may occur in the future.

The 32-bit version of Raspberry Pi is becoming less of a priority in Ubuntu than others. In the end, the release team decided that it would be unwise to affect the schedule any further, and decided to postpone fixes limited to the year 2038 issue as much as possible. As a result, many packages were taken out of the “waiting for build” state and were properly tested.

We were talking about this in mid-March. Just when we thought we were finally ready for the beta, a huge bomb was dropped on March 29th. that is” XZ Utils backdoor (CVE-2024-3094)”. Fortunately for Ubuntu, this backdoor was not included in either the release or development versions. However, the account believed to be the person who installed the backdoor requested a version of Ubuntu with the backdoor just before the backdoor was discovered, so it has had some impact. In fact, the build itself is progressing, and there was a close call that it might be included in the development version soon.

In the end, there was no impact, but given the fact that we were trying to build, we decided to rebuild all packages of the development version that had been changed since February 26th. In other words, it was once again a build competition. As a result, the beta version, which was originally supposed to be released on April 4th, has been postponed to April 11th.

In this way, even though we had just updated the installer, many packages could not be built, and as a result of having to redo the build itself, the installation did not work properly even just before the beta version. It happened. Even just before the release, there are reports that the upgrade is not working properly, so we will probably have to wait until just before April 25th to see if it will actually be released.

By the way, a “release” in Ubuntu is considered to be officially released when it is posted to the announcement mailing list. Occasionally, some users will post on sites such as X saying, “It’s been released!” as soon as the file is placed in the release image distribution location, but be careful as this file may be replaced before the official announcement.

Ubuntu was also featured on PAD!

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS was recently featured on PAD, a channel specializing in PC hardware related to PC Watch and Akiba PC Hotline!.

We’ll be introducing everything from what Ubuntu is to actually installing Ubuntu on your PC and enjoying games, so be sure to check it out.

This may be the first time on PAD that “we start installing the OS on a live broadcast”. With reference to this program and this article, let’s try installing Ubuntu on a PC lying around at GW!