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Canonical’s next major Ubuntu release, Ubuntu 24.10, has been dubbed the “Oracular Oriole” and it now has a release schedule and release date set in stone for October 10th, 2024.
Ubuntu 24.10 “Oracular Oriole” will be Canonical’s 41st Ubuntu release and it’s an interim one that will be supported with software and security updates for only nine months, until July 2025. It will be a release for bleeding-edge Ubuntu users who are willing to trade Ubuntu LTS’s stability with the latest technologies.
While there’s no official word from Canonical yet, the six-month-long development cycle of Oracular Oriole apparently kicked off on April 25th, 2024, the same day Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) was released, with the toolchain upload.
The official release schedule is now online, shared yesterday in a mailing list discussion by developer Jeremy Bícha, suggesting September 19th as the release date for the beta version and October 10th as the release date for the final release.
Other interesting dates in the Oracular Oriole release schedule include two Ubuntu Testing Weeks on June 27th and August 22nd respectively, the Feature Freeze stage on August 15th, the Kernel Freeze stage on September 26th, and the Final Freeze stage and Release Candidate on October 3rd.
Ubuntu 24.10 is expected to ship with the upcoming GNOME 47 desktop environment, which should be out in late September 2024, and will most likely be powered by the upcoming Linux 6.10 kernel series, which should arrive in mid or late July 2024.
To be honest, I was hoping for Linux kernel 6.11, but considering the fact that Ubuntu 24.10’s kernel freeze development stage is set for September 26th and that the final Linux 6.11 kernel release looks to arrive on September 15th or September 22nd, it doesn’t look like a match to me.
Other noteworthy features that should be included in Ubuntu 24.10 include Wayland by default for NVIDIA GPUs, improved messaging for Snap app refreshes, more App Center polishing and support for installing third-party DEB files, OEM configuration alternative for the Ubuntu installer for Hyper-V images and Raspberry Pi.
On the flavor side of things, Lubuntu 24.10 will ship with the LXQt 2.x series desktop environment by default (hopefully with LXQt 2.1 as it will bring full Wayland support), and Kubutnu 24.10 is expected to ship with the latest KDE Plasma 6 desktop environment series by default.
Until then, we’re waiting for the daily build ISOs to appear on the official servers to take the upcoming Ubuntu 24.10 “Oracular Oriole” release for a spin. We’re also waiting for Canonical to announce some of the core components that will be included in the upcoming Ubuntu release.
Last updated 2 weeks ago
