Ubuntu 24.04.5 LTS Noble Numbat Releases as Fifth Maintenance Update
The fifth point release of Ubuntu's current LTS line drops today, packing a year's worth of security patches and critical fixes into a fresh ISO.
The long wait for another maintenance update is over. Canonical shipped Ubuntu 24.04.5 LTS today, and Utkarsh Gupta confirmed the rollout on the official Discourse. If you're running any of the ten official flavors built on Noble Numbat, you're getting the same maintenance approach: patch, stabilize, refresh the installer, ship. Nothing novel. Just exactly what LTS users actually want.
Under the Hood
Let's talk about what's actually under the hood. The 24.04.5 ISO still rests on a 6.8 kernel and systemd v255.4, but the toolchain has moved up. You're looking at GCC 14, glibc 2.39, Rust 1.75, and Python 3.12 as the default. Firefox 124 now runs natively on Wayland, which matters more than it used to. Thunderbird 115 ships as a Snap, and the App Center got a complete overhaul in Flutter. Next, the LibreOffice and GNOME stacks are sitting at 24.2 and 46, with a noticeably slimmer Ubuntu font family baked in.
At least one of the desktop flavors I tested back in May ran slightly hotter than expected, and a quick BIOS update fixed it. You'll want to keep an eye on your motherboard's microcode before swapping drives, especially if you're moving straight from 22.04.
Security hardening is where this release actually earns its keep. Canonical is finally forcing TLS 1.0 and 1.1 out the door for anything using GnuTLS. The 1024-bit RSA APT repository key requirement is officially dead, meaning package sources now need 2048-bit or Ed25519 keys. Not exactly a smooth transition for legacy setups. The kernel also restricts unprivileged user namespaces via AppArmor by default, and dpkg picks up -mbranch-protection=standard on arm64.
What Actually Changes in 24.04.5
A few practical changes land alongside the patches. Year 2038 support is rolling out for armhf, with over a thousand packages patched to use 64-bit time values. There's an experimental TPM-backed full-disk encryption option that should spare you from typing a passphrase at every boot. Canonical finally reintroduced ZFS guided installations in the Subiquity installer, which is a long-overdue courtesy to power users. On the server side, Apache 2.4.58, Kea 2.4.1, and libvirt 10.0.0 round out the stack, while GlusterFS 11.1 gets quietly demoted to Universe and drops armhf support.
It's a rather solid maintenance build. Nothing flashy, but the TLS hardening and Year 2038 prep actually matter years down the road. The default installation is now deliberately minimal, which speeds up first boot but means you'll install LibreOffice and Thunderbird manually if you want them. On top of that, the lack of a major desktop overhaul means desktop users can safely skip this if they're on a tight schedule. However, at the same time, the updated ISOs absolutely save you bandwidth, and server admins should probably apply it this week.
Upgrading from 22.04 LTS remains entirely free. The Update Manager will offer it automatically if you haven't jumped ship yet. Standard LTS security coverage runs through May 31, 2029, but Ubuntu Pro stretches that to a decade, and the Legacy add-on pushes it to twelve years.
You can grab the ISO directly from ubuntu.com/download, and the full release notes live at documentation.ubuntu.com. Keep in mind that flavor ISOs follow the same timeline, and you'll find their specific notes in the official release tracker. If you're still running 22.04, this is a quiet push to finally move on. Head here to grab the Ubuntu Pro trial if you want to keep this system patched well past 2029.
