Ubuntu Linux

Powered by the latest Linux 6.11 kernel series, Ubuntu 24.10 features the latest and greatest GNOME 47 desktop environment for the Ubuntu Desktop flavor with additional patches for Mutter and GNOME Shell to enhance stability and performance. In addition, the Ubuntu Dock now visualizes Snap refreshes and includes better handling for PWAs installed via the Chromium Snap.

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Under the hood, Ubuntu 24.10 comes with an updated toolchain that includes GCC 14.2, GNU Binutils 2.43.1, GNU C Library 2.40, LLVM 19, Rust 1.80, Go 1.23, OpenSSL 3.3, systemd 256.5, Netplan 1.1, and .NET 8. The Ubuntu Desktop installer was also updated with support for local file paths for autoinstall import.

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Ubuntu 24.10 will be supported for only nine months, until July 2025. If you’re looking for long-term support, you should download and install Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat), which is supported until at least 2029.

Official Website: Ubuntu 24.10 (Oracular Oriole)

The latest release of snapd, the engine that installs, manages, and configures snap apps, includes a couple of changes that improve the performance of the Steam snap specifically.

Snapd 2.65 sees the removal of “all AppArmor and seccomp restrictions to improve user experience”.

This doesn’t mean the Steam runs un-sandboxed, rather the Steam snap is more in control of its own containers (Steam is really more of a framework than app, with multiple components, parts, and so on).

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Anecdotally, the latest Steam snap release paired with snapd 2.65 is also reported to open faster than before, with launch times on-par with those of the DEB version. They’re also reported to be a couple seconds faster1 than the Steam Flatpak.

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Not strictly Steam related, but perhaps relevant from a gaming POV, snapd 2.65 also ships with improved snap-confine and OpenGL interface compatibility with NVIDIA drivers.

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 860 for the week of September 29 - October 5, 2024.

• Ubuntu Community Council 2024 elections are open!
• Oracular Oriole (24.10) Final Freeze
• Welcome New Members and Developers
• Ubuntu Stats
• Hot in Support
• Ubuntu Meeting Activity Reports
• LXD: Weekly news #365
• Rocks Public Journal; 2024-10-03
• Ubuntu Summit 2024
• LoCo Events
• The 2024.09.30 SRU Cycle started
• Event Report - KDE Akademy 2024
• ...
• And much more!

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 859 for the week of September 22 - 28, 2024.

• Ubuntu Stats
• Hot in Support
• Ubuntu Meeting Activity Reports
• Rocks Public Journal
• LXD: Weekly news #364
• LoCo Events
• Oracular Oriole (24.10) Release Status Tracking
• CUPS Remote Code Execution Vulnerability Fix Available
• ...
• And much more!

Canonical’s security team has released updates for the cups-browsed, cups-filters, libcupsfilters and libppd packages for all Ubuntu LTS releases under standard support. The updates remediate CVE-2024-47076, CVE-2024-47175, CVE-2024-47176, while CVE-2024-47177 is addressed by the other 3 vulnerabilities being patched. Information on the affected versions can be found in the CVE pages linked above. If you have any of these installed, our recommendation is to update as soon as possible. Read on to learn more about the details. Security updates for ESM releases will be released shortly.

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 858 for the week of September 15 - 21, 2024.

• Ubuntu 24.10 (Oracular Oriole) Beta released
• Welcome New Members and Developers
• Ubuntu Stats
• Hot in Support
• Ubuntu Meeting Activity Reports
• Ubuntu Flavor sync meeting notes: 9 September 2024
• UbuCon Asia 2024 Team meeting 2024-09-15 12:00 UTC
• Ubuntu Home Server Workshop 2024 @Busan
• Ubucon Portugal 2024 needs you!
• LoCo Events
• Mir release 2.18.0
• Call for testing: ubuntu-frame, mir-test-tools on the 22 track (Mir 2.17.2 update)
• Ubuntu Desktop’s 24.10 Dev Cycle - Part 6: September Update
• ...
• And much more!

Today, we’re thrilled to announce that Vivaldi is officially available for download as a Snap package, bringing our powerful, customizable browser to even more Linux users.

Ubuntu 24.10 ‘Oracular Oriole’ will be released on October 13th, and as you’d expect from a new version of Ubuntu, it’s packed with new features.

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• GNOME 47 Included
• New File Manager Features
• Disk Usage Analyser
• New & Expanded Settings
• Ubuntu Dock Changes
• Ubuntu Anniversary Touches
• New Set of Wallpapers
• New Security Center App
• NVIDIA Defaults to Wayland
• Better Fingerprint Support
• SysProf & Kdump-Tools Preinstalled
• New Look APT
• Linux Kernel 6.11
• Power Efficiency Boost
• Updated Software & Tooling

When you install a PWA1 in the Chromium snap you might expect it to open it in a separate, streamlined window when you open it using its shortcut in the applications grid.

Presently, PWAs in the Chromim Snap don’t get detected as separate instances by GNOME Shell. This means no separate dock icon (it is grouped into Chromium’s) and it is not treated as a separate app by the task switcher, making it difficult to alt/super + tab to it.

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Oracular carries an Ubuntu-specific chromium-snap-pwa.patch to GNOME Shell.

This patch ensures that PWA windows from the Chromium snap are handled per users expectations: their own dock icon, and their own entry in app switcher.

The plan is to back-port this patch to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS too, so keep an eye out for that.

Primarily written in the Go programming language, Authd is an authentication service for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS that has been introduced to simplify the needs of organizations and individuals looking to use identity management services.

At launch, Authd supports OIDC, with Microsoft's Entra ID being the first supported identity provider. As demonstrated by the screenshot above, Ubuntu was showing an authentication prompt to log in to a service equipped with Entra ID.

Authd can be used to log in through the GNOME Display Manager (GDM), or via Secure Shell (SSH). It has a modular design that makes it effortless to integrate with cloud services.

Canonical also intends to introduce more identity providers in the near future, with plans to also have a white-label OIDC provider (allows wider customization) in the mix.

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 857 for the week of September 8 - 14, 2024.

In this Issue

• Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS released
• Oracular Oriole (to be 24.10) now in Kernel Feature Freeze
• Ubuntu Stats
• Hot in Support
• Ubuntu Meeting Activity Reports
• UbuCon North America 2025 Status Update
• LXD: Weekly news - 362
• Starting of Ubuntu Bengal, a LoCo of Ubuntu based on Bengal, India
• Opportunity Open Source Conference - IITK 2024
• UbuCon Asia 2024: My first ever conference!
• LoCo Events
• Ubuntu Desktop’s 24.10 Dev Cycle - Part 5: Introducing Permissions Prompting
• Upstream release of cloud-init 24.3
• ODH-029: Documenting a new project
• Dealing with spam on Matrix
• Advisory: Spam invite incident (2024-09-13)
• ...
• And much more!

A lot has changed in the past two decades. A lot of new releases, new platforms and even a few new logos along the way. One thing stayed the same: the heart of Ubuntu. A global community of users, enthusiasts and contributors all helping to spread the mission of changing the world through open-source software. We couldn't have done it without you.

More at: 20 Years of Canonical Ubuntu

Canonical released today Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS as the fifth and last planned point release to the Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) long-term supported operating system series bringing the latest security patches and updated components.

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Apart from the security patches and updated packages that have been released during the past six months, the Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS point release is powered by a newer kernel from the Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) operating system series, namely Linux kernel 6.8, to better support installations on newer hardware.

On the other hand, the Mesa graphics stack remains unchanged in this new Ubuntu 22.04 LTS point release, even though Ubuntu 24.04 LTS includes a newer version, namely Mesa 24.0. I don’t know why, but Canonical chose to ship Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS with the Mesa 23.2.1 graphics stack that was also included in the Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS point release.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19686071

The upcoming Ubuntu 24.10 operating system promises a new feature called “permissions prompting” for an extra layer of privacy and security.

The new permissions prompting feature in Ubuntu will let users control, manage, and understand the behavior of apps running on their machines. It leverages Ubuntu’s AppArmor implementation and enables fine-grained access control over unmodified binaries without having to change the app’s source code.

From Ubuntu Discourse: Ubuntu Desktop’s 24.10 Dev Cycle - Part 5: Introducing Permissions Prompting

This solution consists of two new seeded components in Ubuntu 24.10, prompting-client and desktop-security-center alongside deeper changes to snapd and AppArmor available in the upcoming snapd 2.65. The first is a new prompting client (built in Flutter) that surfaces the prompt requests from the application via snapd. The second is our new Security Center:

In this release the Security Center is the home for managing your prompt rules, over time we will expand its functionality to cover additional security-related settings for your desktop such as encryption management and firewall control.

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With prompting enabled, an application that has access to the home interface in its AppArmor profile will trigger a request to snapd to ask the user for more granular permissions at the moment of access:

As a result, users now have direct control over the specific directories and file paths an application has access to, as well its duration. The results of prompts are then stored in snapd so they can be queried and managed by the user via the Security Center.

Sysprof as the system-wide performance profiler for Linux systems is now set to be installed by default on Ubuntu 24.10 and moving forward with future Ubuntu Linux releases. Currently users need to sudo apt install sysprof to enjoy this GUI and command-line driven program but now is to be installed by default on the Ubuntu desktop.

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 856 for the week of September 1 - 7, 2024.

• Upgrades to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Suspended / Re-enabled
• Ubuntu Stats
• Hot in Support
• Ubuntu Meeting Activity Reports
• LXD: Weekly news - 361
• Starcraft Clinic - 2024-Aug-30
• UbuCon Asia
• LoCo Events
• Jammy Jellyfish (22.04.5 LTS) Point-Release Status Tracking
• Ubuntu Representation at EthAccra 2024
• A desktop touched by Midas: Oracular Oriole
• Looking for more internship project ideas for Outreachy (December-March cohort)
• ...
• And much more!

Last Wednesday, we temporarily suspended upgrades to Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS due to unforeseen issues with dependencies of installed kernel headers after release upgrades. These issues were tracked in bug 2078720 and have now been resolved, and upgrades to 24.04.1 LTS have been enabled again.

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This issue has been fixed in the APT 2.4.13 update in 22.04 LTS, and upgrades from interim releases have been addressed by a fallback to the previous algorithm in the ubuntu-release-upgrader 1:24.04.23 stable release update. We are adding additional checks to our automated upgrade testing to prevent similar issues in the future.

If you are affected by this issue, you can run apt install --fix-broken to remove the old kernel headers and make apt operational again.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/41741300

As a lifelong Windows user I've just for the first time switched to Ubuntu and I'm learning how to navigate the system but I haven't found an easy way to update my Carbon's X1 Gen 6 BIOS from its hard disk and would appreciate any advice.

I'd be also happy to hear what I should do as a newcomer to Ubuntu to make my experience with it better and have an easier time overall.

A blog post about all the official and community wallpapers in the upcoming Ubuntu 24.10 Oracular Oriole.

Last week, the first point release of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS arrived and with it, upgrades from Ubuntu 22.04 LTS enabled.

Only, those upgrades didn’t go work out well for everyone.

So Canonical has hit pause on upgrades to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS from Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

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In reply, Canonical says it halted upgrades “due to a critical bug in ubuntu-release-upgrader in the way it’s using the apt solver” (though other, recurring, issues have been filed on Launchpad and mentioned on social media since last week).