Ubuntu 24.10 Beta is Out! See What’s New in the Release

The Beta release of Ubuntu 24.10, code-name Oracular Oriole, is out last night on Sep 20.

This is a short-term release with 9 months support. It so far features Linux Kernel 6.11 and GNOME 47 desktop.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary, the new release includes a “Warty Brown” accent color and new optional wallpapers in the “Appearances” settings page. There’s also an anniversary logo that you can see in the login screen.

And, the release now by default plays the original startup sound at login. While, there’s a toggle option in “Sound” settings page to turn it off.

The sound comes from the warty-startup.oga file under “/usr/share/sounds/Yaru/stereo” directory. Without logging out and back in, you may run command below in terminal to play it out:

/usr/bin/canberra-gtk-play --id="warty-startup"

Anniversary logo in login screen

The Ubuntu Desktop introduced new Security Center app. The app has a feature “Require apps to ask for system permissions” (disabled by default), allows user to control file/folder access permissions for Snap applications.

With the feature enabled, you’ll get similar pop-up, as the screenshot below shows you, when a Snap app is trying to access (read or write) files/folders in user home. User can choose either ‘Allow’ or ‘Deny’. And the Security Center app will remember your selection if it’s set to always.

Pop-up for file/folder access permission

The release now pre-installs the Sysprof app. It’s a GNOME app for software developers aid in debugging and optimization.

GNOME Sysprof

The auto-install feature in desktop installer now supports local file paths. The power profile daemon (for Power Mode setting) has been updated with better support for AMD devices. And, fprintd has been updated with more fingerprinter devices support.

For NVIDIA, Ubuntu 24.10 finally defaults to Wayland session, though user can still choose “Ubuntu on Xorg” from login screen for the classic X11 session.

And, the left Ubuntu Dock (dash-to-dock) has been updated with better support for Snap apps, and web apps installed via Chromium browser.

Other changes in the Ubuntu Desktop are mostly features of GNOME 47. They include:

Accent colors. Ubuntu 24.10 seems now using the accent colors from GNOME 47 plus one more “Warty Brown” color mentioned above.
Better small displays support.
Faster GTK rendering for older hardware and mobile devices
Hardware acceleration support for screen recording when using Intel/AMD GPUs.
Redesigned File Open/Save dialog.
Persistent remote login session.
And see here for more about GNOME 47.

Toolchain Upgrades in the release include: