Go programming language announced the new 1.24 release on 11 February, 2025! Here’s the new features and how to install guide for Ubuntu & other Linux.

What’s New in Go 1.24:

• Fully supports generic type aliases, allows to create a new name for an existing type (support type parameters) without creating a new type.
• New -tool flag for go get, allowing to add a tool directive to the current module for named packages.
• New tests analyzer for go vet to report common mistakes in test packages.
• New set of mechanisms to facilitate FIPS 140-3 compliance.
• Faster and less error-prone testing.B.Loop method to perform benchmark iterations.
• New os.Root type provides the ability to perform filesystem operations within a specific directory.
• New runtime.AddCleanup finalization mechanism that is more flexible, more efficient, and less error-prone.
• New weak package provides weak pointers.
• New crypto/mlkem package implements ML-KEM-768 and ML-KEM-1024.
• New crypto/hkdf, crypto/pbkdf2, and crypto/sha3 packages.
• New experimental testing/synctest package provides support for testing concurrent code.

See the announcement for more changes in Go 1.24.

How to Install Golang 1.24 in Ubuntu

1. Download the Linux Tarball

Go provides official Linux tarball for i386, amd64, arm64, and armv6l CPU architecture types. They are available to download at the link below:

In case you don’t know your system architecture type, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal and run dpkg --print-architecture command to tell.

Or, run command to download the Linux tarball from command line (amd64 package in the case):

cd ~/Downloads && wget -c https://go.dev/dl/go1.24.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz

Golang keeps moving! When you see this tutorial, a newer release may be out. So, change the URL (usually the part of version number) in last command accordingly.

2. Extract Go Tarball to /usr/local

NOTE: If you’re trying to update Go to newer version, it’s HIGHLY recommended to remove the old one (via command below) to avoid issues:

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/go

After downloaded the tarball, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T), and run commands:

• Navigate to the folder that saved the tarball (usually Downloads folder):

  cd ~/Downloads

• Then, extract the tarball to /usr/local directory:

  sudo tar -C /usr/local/ -xzf go1.24.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz

  Also replace package name go1.24.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz in the command according to which tarball you downloaded.

After successfully extracted the tarball, use ls /usr/local to verify. It will output a list of sub-folders including go.

3. Set PATH Environment Variable

a.) Add GOROOT to Your User PATH

To let your Ubuntu system know where to find Go command, user can add it to the PATH. And, here /usr/local/go is the GOROOT directory. You just need to add its bin sub-folder to the PATH.

Without logging out, run the command below to set PATH environment, which works until your close the terminal window or exit the command console.

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin

To make it permanent, open home folder, press Ctrl+H, then click edit the .profile file (or .bashrc). When file opens, add following lines and save it.

# set PATH so it includes /usr/local/go/bin if it exists
if [ -d "/usr/local/go/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="/usr/local/go/bin:$PATH"
fi

This works for current user only, and applies in next login.

To set the PATH environment variable for all users, create & edit a config file under /etc/profile.d directory instead. To do so, run command:

sudo nano /etc/profile.d/go.sh

Then, paste the same lines above. Press Ctrl+S to save, and Ctrl+X to exit. Also, log out and back in to apply.

b.) Add GOPATH to Your User PATH

Running go install command by default downloads & installs packages to go sub-folder (create automatically if not exist) in user home. It’s called GOPATH.

If you want to change GOPATH to another directory, for example .local/go, either use command below that works for current terminal or current command console:

export GOPATH=$HOME/.local/go

Or, edit the .profile file in user home and add the line in the end to make it permanent at next login.

To add GOPATH to your user PATH, here use the default GOPATH for example, either run command for current command console only:

export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/go/bin

Or, edit the .profile file and add following lines:

# Add GOPATH to PATH if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/go/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/go/bin:$PATH"
fi

NOTE: The GOPATH directory may NOT exist out-of-the-box. You need to log out and back in to apply it to user PATH on the folder creation (usually first time running go install command).

Golang also has many other environment options, you may run go env command to print them, and run similar commands above to change the directories.

Create your First Go program

When done setting PATH Environment Variable, you can run command to verify go version:

go version

To create your first Go project, say hello, do following commands one by one:

• First, create a project folder named ‘hello’ and navigate into that folder.

  mkdir hello && cd hello

  Then, initialize new module (here use example/hello as module name) in current directory to create a go.mod file to manage dependency.

  go mod init example/hello

  

• Now, let’s create new file, hello.go for example, with your favorite text editor:

  nano hello.go

  Then, add the first code and save it (For nano, press Ctrl+S then Ctrl+X):

  package main
  
  import "fmt"
  
  func main() {
      fmt.Println("Hello, World!")
  }

  

• Finally, either use go run hello.go command to run it. Or go build hello.go to build into a binary file.

Uninstall Go

To uninstall golang, simply delete the go directory under /usr/local by running command:

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/go

That’s it.