Beginner-friendly Linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is now available for download

[Redaktion]

Canonical has officially released Ubuntu 24.04, which will receive critical security updates for 5 years thanks to Long Term Support (LTS). In addition to the latest, slightly modified GNOME 46 desktop, Ubuntu 24.04 comes with the Linux 6.8 kernel.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Beginner-friendly-Linux-Ubuntu-24-04-LTS-is-now-available-for-download.831648.0.html

[NikoB]

Everyone criticizes W10/W11, and officially paid ones, but the share of Linux in the world is still 1-2% on desktops, as before. Nobody needs chaos and disorder with the works of red-eyed "altruists" who are not actually responsible for anything and whose products for this reason pose an order of magnitude greater danger than M$ products. This has been proven many times in practice.

I consider free Linux distributions, from a practical point of view, as an opportunity to create a normal test environment on laptops supplied without Windows in order to check the performance of all equipment upon purchase, and with the source code of this test software. But this is exactly what laptop manufacturers are not ready to do, just like chip manufacturers. The full capabilities of the chips are used only in Windows in binary proprietary drivers without source code, as has always been the case. Even if Linux users receive the same support for new hardware, it is with a delay of six months, or even 1-2 years. This is the fate of free stuff - everything advanced is available only as part of paid products and nothing else, and no changes in this scheme are expected in the future.

[NikoB]

I personally bought a laptop with Ubuntu 18 LTS in 2018 from Dell. And despite the fact that I am an IT professional and understand many things orders of magnitude better than ordinary people, exactly 3 hours of setting up this factory version was enough for me to stop loading, simply after switching (at the suggestion of the OS itself) from the NVidia driver with open source code into a proprietary binary driver to increase performance (as suggested by the OS itself). And this was required for a trivial reason - hardware graphics acceleration did not work in browsers, which worked perfectly under W10. And I have never managed to bring any version of Windows to complete collapse in such a time...

In 2019, I again installed a more recent version of Ubuntu LTS on a new laptop with AMD graphics. And again I didn't get hardware video acceleration, which worked great in W10.

Years go by, but nothing changes. Remember - using any Linux distribution sharply limits the functionality of the new hardware compared to Windows. It will be a while before you get what Windows users have from the moment of purchase. And where everything is set up quickly and easily within reasonable limits.

And all Linux distributions over the years have become so fat in size and RAM requirements that I observed an absurd picture - Ubuntu crashed on the same amount of RAM on which a full-fledged W10 worked perfectly...

This is the second problem - system optimization of Linux versions in terms of efficient use of RAM and overall consumption of process resources is always significantly inferior to the same in Windows - because there is a well-coordinated paid team doing this. And in Linux they do this, figuratively speaking - "swan, crayfish and pike"... The end result is exactly what such a "team" is capable of...

[John LTS]

Microsoft bots post under the article about Ubuntu LTS. Microsoft bot does not know that hardware video playback worked on Linux for a long time and now it works out of the box on Ubuntu. I am using Ubuntu since the end of 2019 on my laptop and almost one year on my desktop. For almost one year I have not booted into Win, I do not have Win for dual boot on my laptop or desktop and I miss nothing.I should have switched to Ubuntu on my desktop in 2019 or even earlier. Ubuntu is far better operating system out of the box with better default software. I could never set fonts to something usable in Win10 for my 4K monitor and on Kubuntu/Ubuntu and other distros it is easy to set up desired font scaling. Win UI scale slider is useless for high dpi monitors. EU is so concerned with privacy, but lets Microsoft copy information from private computers without any knowledge of consent of a computer owner. There is no point for Microsoft and their products at this point. 

[George]

Ok, sure over the years setting up a new computer (or OS) no matter WHAT the OS is has gotten quicker and somewhat easier.

Years ago any new WIN system would require 4-8hrs of uninstalling the OEM included 'bloatware' or a 'factory restore' which comically did not include as much nonsense. However even then and today expect your system to reboot +1/2 to dozen times while it downloads and installs drivers and updates.

The Linux distro's are 'similar' but with the different end results. No matter the age of the hardware, functional drivers may or NOT be installed and even the 'functional' ones may have limitations that the WIN counter parts don't.

In the end the WIN installations have much greater odds of being fully functional then the Linux distro's do.

[A]

Everyone criticizes W10/W11, and officially paid ones, but the share of Linux in the world is still 1-2% on desktops, as before. Nobody needs chaos and disorder with the works of red-eyed "altruists" who are not actually responsible for anything and whose products for this reason pose an order of magnitude greater danger than M$ products. This has been proven many times in practice.

Again you lie, Desktop linux is over 4%, over 6% including chrome OS. Likely it is even higher as linux users are more likely to hide their useragent

I consider free Linux distributions, from a practical point of view, as an opportunity to create a normal test environment on laptops supplied without Windows in order to check the performance of all equipment upon purchase, and with the source code of this test software. But this is exactly what laptop manufacturers are not ready to do, just like chip manufacturers. The full capabilities of the chips are used only in Windows in binary proprietary drivers without source code, as has always been the case. Even if Linux users receive the same support for new hardware, it is with a delay of six months, or even 1-2 years. This is the fate of free stuff - everything advanced is available only as part of paid products and nothing else, and no changes in this scheme are expected in the future.

Most drivers for hardware is available before the hardware is even out... your so called few month delay is usually because you are on LTS which may not backport all the new hardware. This is why some distros like PopOS choose to go with LTS + latest kernel to insure driver support for latest hardware or Linux Mint Edge

I personally bought a laptop with Ubuntu 18 LTS in 2018 from Dell. And despite the fact that I am an IT professional and understand many things orders of magnitude better than ordinary people, exactly 3 hours of setting up this factory version was enough for me to stop loading, simply after switching (at the suggestion of the OS itself) from the NVidia driver with open source code into a proprietary binary driver to increase performance (as suggested by the OS itself). And this was required for a trivial reason - hardware graphics acceleration did not work in browsers, which worked perfectly under W10. And I have never managed to bring any version of Windows to complete collapse in such a time...

In 2019, I again installed a more recent version of Ubuntu LTS on a new laptop with AMD graphics. And again I didn't get hardware video acceleration, which worked great in W10.

I've had the same problem in W10. Out of box W10 did not include the proper graphics drivers and I had to download proprietary binary drivers to get acceleration to work.

Long story short, you haven't tried Linux in 5 years and know nothing. This latest Ubuntu includes the proprietary Nvidia drivers out of box

Years go by, but nothing changes. Remember - using any Linux distribution sharply limits the functionality of the new hardware compared to Windows. It will be a while before you get what Windows users have from the moment of purchase. And where everything is set up quickly and easily within reasonable limits.

That only applies if you are on LTS and not using latest kernel. If you opt for non-LTS, or use a non-LTS kernel which many distros conveniently provide, there is no issue

And all Linux distributions over the years have become so fat in size and RAM requirements that I observed an absurd picture - Ubuntu crashed on the same amount of RAM on which a full-fledged W10 worked perfectly...

Linux tends to use less RAM than windows. Though Ubuntu does use more ram than other distros due to snaps, as snaps are isolated containers which obviously have a slight overhead

Windows does have a thing where they compress ram when it runs low. Linux also has option for ram compression called zram which gives more control of the strength of the compression, though whether it is enabled out of box or not depends on the distro

[indy]

I wiped 11, put Ubuntu 23.10 on it, and everything was up and running in 15 minutes. No tweaks to get rid of annoyances. A few plug-ins to get taskbar where I wanted (& now I realize Kubuntu might have been a better fit for me coming from Windows.)

Ubuntu+Firefox is the single best desktop/laptop environment I have ever used.

The Linux Kernel is in far, far more usage than any other Kernel...period. Over 45% of computing devices.

I am done with Windows...for life. It feels amazing!