Ubuntu 24.10: the SNAP ecosystem improves, with a touch of nostalgia

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Timecodes:
00:00 Intro
00:42 Sponsor: TuxCare
01:54 Visual Changes
04:51 Ubuntu-specific changes
09:49 GNOME 47 Changes
14:36 Under the hood
17:28 Parting Thoughts
19:16 Sponsor: Tuxedo Computers
20:14 Support the channel

Visual Changes:
- It's Ubuntu 20th birthday
- Ubuntu anniversary: you get a "20th anniversary" text at boot and on the login screen,
- You get the Ubuntu 4.10 startup sound, you can disable it in the settings
- You get a new "warty" brown accent colour, which I absolutely love because I'm nostalgic of that era of Ubuntu, but other people might find it ugly to the extreme
- You get revamped Ubuntu LTS wallpapers, and 4.10 wallpaper as well, so you can relive these wonderful moments
- I wish they had added the themes from various LTS as well, the 6.06 theme, 8.04 one, and maybe the 10.04 one

Ubuntu specific changes
- Dock: progress bars when a snap is updating in the background, better than having the icon disappear then reappear
- Context menu is improved a bit, with a little header label and an other option: App Details, to open the app's listing in the App Center. Only works for snap apps
- App Center has a new Art and design category, the "featured" snaps section is moved up, in progress downloads are now visible in the "manage" label of the sidebar
- You can also uninstall snaps from that "manage" part of the app, and if you're trying to update an app that's open, you'll see a banner telling you to close that ap to perform the update
- Touchscreen support is improved, but couldn't test that myself
- Security Center: this is a new thing that lets you manage permissions for snap applications. Right now, you can enable an experimental permission that will trigger the new Ubuntu prompting client
- This is your "allow app to do X or Y" kind of thing, where you can set permissions once, always, for any type of file, and the like, and you can then tweak these permissions in the securiyty center
- Think of it as the flatseal / flatpak permissions, but for snaps
- In the future, this thing will also get firewall controls, Ubuntu pro subscription settings, and more

GNOME 47:
- Accent colors plugged into a settings portal, so should work with more apps
- This means the colors that are offered are a bit different than previously
- Dialogs are revamped with split buttons, looks like macOS
- Hardware encoded screen recordings
- Nautilus new sidebar, network emplacements, internal drives in the sidebar now: no more other locations
- Nautilus: used as file picker
- Settings: Activate windws on hover in accessibility, input source previews with keyboard layouts, online accounts are better with MS 365 suporting email calendar and contacts, webdav auto discovers services, and IMPA SMTP also does autocomplete now

Under the hood
- Wayland for everyone, even Nvidia, but X11 is still preinstalled
- Better fingerprint support with a newer version of fprintd and libfprint, but can't test that
- System profiling tools preinstalled, like sysprof, useful for developers to see why their app is underperoforming, or to optimize things
- APT command line tool also was updated to version 3.0, and the terminal UI is much more legible, with colors, padding, line breaks and spacing, so t's way more readable
- Kernel 6.11 with more hardware support and faster ext4 filesystem, Mesa 24.2.3 and Nvidia 550 or 560

[krtirtho]

*Ubuntu releases new version
Nick 0.00001ms later: I was there when it was written

[Dugachug]

As soon as I saw Ubuntu 9.10 I got the feels. That was my first distro, followed by the original Damn Small Linux.

[CreepToeJoe]

0:05 I was there Gandalf. I was there 3000 years ago.

[WinstoneSmith]

A very nice touch of the new APT is that will colour in red when about to DELETE packages. This will save your life every now and then.

[albertkinng]

While I recognize the criticism directed at Ubuntu, it truly stands out as the ideal Linux distribution for the average user. I've successfully introduced it to my family, including my mom, and they effortlessly adapted to it, just as they did with Mac and Windows. It functions seamlessly!

[Cyco_Nix]

Yep remember when it first dropped. It changed the Linux perception for a lot of people. Coming from back when Linux first dropped and going through many of the early distros, including the OGs like Slackware, Debian, Red Hat, and SUSE, it was something different for those that were still scare to try Linux.

[WinstoneSmith]

Shoutout for the NVIDIA Wayland support at long last. I'm eager to enjoy it

[nathanrussell]

I remember using Ubuntu around 2006. It has come a long way. I use it daily on 2 of my machines and love it.

[thefanboy]

The start up sound is nice but ultimately it's that bird symbol that's awesome. I mean just look at it ! It's geometrically wonderful!

[krtirtho]

Looks like Ubuntu is also pushing for a Flutter based custom Desktop Environment (echosystem tbh) and they're slowly building apps for it in Flutter

[isrbillmeyer]

Kubuntu now for many years my daily driver. Tried many other distro's and spins and just keep on going back to Kubuntu. Looking forward to getting a stable Plasma 6.x / KDE.

[noobbyboimaster]

I recently went back to running regular Ubuntu after distrohopping(and usually kept either Pop OS or Fedora if I wanted something stable) and I have used practically everything maybe except Gentoo or LFS, and to be honest the experience with regular Ubuntu has become pretty cool even with using some apps installed via Snap. Although I do use apps mainly from Flatpak or native sources, snap to be honest isn't as bad as it once was. Not to mention Ubuntu 24.04 compared to any other distro out there is working far better on my laptop surprisingly.

Anyways, thanks for the video Nick! Sure 24.10 isn't that big of an upgrade but to celebrate 20th anniversary of by far one of the most popular Linux distros I will be upgrading to it and see how it works out!

[yaroslav]

Ubuntu was the first distro that pulled me into the Linux rabbit hole. Despite using Fedora for years, I still have great respect for Ubuntu. They're doing a great job!

[Proman]

As someone who manually uses Canberra play in startup applications to make a startup sound, this change is very welcome!

[konishiwoi]

That boot sound is not bad, it's soothing and techy, but with modern machines and their speed, it lasts waaaay too long xD

[Cadey]

The 8.04 wallpaper still goes so hard. I've used it on my macbook and gotten people turning heads at it.

[honkhonkler]

The first Linux distro I ever tried was Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope. It's come a long way since then.

I ordered 6 dvd by mail from Canonical. My first distro was mandrake, but this "order" a dvd thing with a release was too good to pass.that boot sound though... never ending. Sosuemi for mac continues to be the best one.

[RagnarinVa]

It is pleasant to see Ubuntu focus on the desktop - it is back to my main driver. I am using 24.10 now and its stable and I restored from my 24-04 back-up. Still cannot fall in love with the Warty Warthog color scheme - will stick to current colors. Nick - thanks again for another informative video.

[vidal]

I love flatpaks. Snaps could be a good alternative. If they were really free. The safety argument for a centralized store doesn't hold any weight when people could download scam crypto wallets on the biggining of the year.