When you spin up a new High Performance Virtual Server you have a range of Linux distros to choose from. That range now includes Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. In keeping with Ubuntu's habit of naming versions after more obscure members of the animal kingdom, those of you who lose track of version numbers can call it Noble Numbat.
As important as version numbers and alliterative nicknames are, the "LTS" part of the name is what really matters. Being a Long Term Support release, Noble Numbat will be kept stable and patched for a good number of years. Ubuntu have scheduled standard support until April 2029 and legacy support through to April 2036.
What's new in Noble Numbat?
We'll let the creators speak for themselves:
The official release announcement promises that "Our 10th Long Term Supported release sets a new standard in performance engineering, enterprise security and developer experience."
In the much more thorough release notes you can read about such new additions and features as:
The new 6.8 Linux kernel.
Future-proofing against the Year 2038 problem (which, as Wikipedia explains, is a bit like Y2K, and thus well worth solving early).
Full support for .NET 8 (good news for Umbraco developers, among others).
Tested and ready for your next High Performance Virtual Server
Like we do for every distro that we offer, we have thoroughly tested Noble Numbat before releasing it. We've prioritised our High Performance Virtual Server platform because, frankly, these machines deserve the latest and greatest. If you haven't already seen the benchmarking results, prepare to see what "high performance" really means.
Or if you've been waiting for as many years' support as possible for your Linux OS, now is the the time to spin up a new HPVS and accelerate your way towards 2029.
Main image: Helenabella on Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA-3.0
