Ubuntu 24.04.5 LTS (Noble Numbat) shipped on September 10, 2026 as a maintenance point release packing in security patches and high-severity bug fixes for a shorter post-install update cycle. Just days later, a desktop installer crash on the "Extended selection" option forced Canonical to pull the fresh amd64 Desktop ISO. The company rebuilt and reissued it as 24.04.5.1 on September 15, leaving every other artifact, server, cloud, netboot, WSL, and the official flavors, unchanged. Fresh installers should grab the 24.04.5.1 image, while existing 24.04 users can simply upgrade through Update Manager.

Ubuntu 24.04.5.1 LTS ships after a desktop installer bug forced an emergency ISO rebuild

Canonical pulled the fresh Ubuntu 24.04.5 Desktop image days after launch when the installer crashed on one option, then reissued it as 24.04.5.1. Every other artifact in the release was left untouched.

Ubuntu 24.04.5 LTS, codenamed Noble Numbat, went out Thursday, September 10 as the newest maintenance update in the 24.04 LTS line. Point releases rarely make news. They quietly fold every security patch and high-severity bug fix shipped since the last point release into fresh install images, so a fresh download means a much shorter post-install update pile. The announcement landed on the Ubuntu Community Hub from the Release Team's Utkarsh Gupta, on Ubuntu's usual six-monthly LTS cadence.

That cadence had drifted a little. The prior point release, 24.04.4, arrived February 12, 2026. This one came almost seven months later. Some of it is just the calendar, but it still felt a touch slow for an LTS.

The actual trouble arrived within hours.

A bug report (LP#2167127) went live on September 11, the day after launch. The desktop installer crashes when you pick the "Extended selection" option, the choice you reach for when you want a lean default install and then bolt LibreOffice, Thunderbird, and similar apps on top. Happened to affect only one artifact though: the amd64 Desktop installer image. Server, cloud, netboot, and the official flavors were never at risk.

Canonical moved quickly. It yanked the 24.04.5 Desktop ISO from the official download site while a fix was being baked, leaving fresh installers with nothing to grab. If you already ran 24.04.4, you were fine. A manual upgrade through Update Manager still worked, and only fresh installs needed the corrected image at all.

By September 15, the fix was ready. The rebuilt Desktop amd64 ISO shipped as Ubuntu 24.04.5.1 LTS. Watch for that ".5.1" suffix, since it is the whole story. This is the only artifact in the release that got reissued, and a clean reissue five days after launch is a fast turnaround.

Everything else in 24.04.5 stays exactly as it was. The server ISO, the netboot tarball, the WSL image, and every official flavor rolled out September 8 through 10 without a second edit. Only the Desktop amd64 image crossed the finish line twice, this time sitting at 5.8 GB with a last-modified date of September 14.

If you are doing a fresh install, grab the 24.04.5.1 Desktop image. Everyone else can just let Update Manager do its thing. Head here for the Noble download page.

What actually landed in 24.04.5

Per Ubuntu's own documentation, this point release covers packages from the main and restricted suites, plus some changes in universe and multiverse. The headline item is the security pile, which bundles all patches issued up to and including September 10, 2026.

Those security notes include fixes for exim4 (a buffer overflow and a PROXYv2 info-disclosure hole), memcached (an out-of-bounds heap write in its LRU crawler), and more, all tracked on the Ubuntu Security Notices page.

On the desktop side there is a grab-bag of real-world annoyances. Fingerprint readers gain support for a raft of libfprint devices from Synaptics, Goodix, Elan, and Egis. gtk4 picks up fixes for graphical junk after you change display scaling under Xorg, along with context-menu and touch-device reattachment crashes. mutter now restores windows to external monitors and stops certain FPS drops, while plymouth no longer crashes at boot on certain multi-GPU and DisplayLink setups.

Server and cloud users get their own share, too. cloud-init advanced to newer upstream snapshots, and the OpenStack stack picked up libvirt, qemu, nova, cinder, neutron, and horizon fixes. The mail and networking stacks moved as well: dovecot now validates OAuth2 JWTs, dnsmasq jumped to 2.91, squid to 6.14, and rabbitmq-server stops choking when port 5672 is already taken.

The bigger picture

Here's the thing: 24.04.5.1 simply sits on top of the original April 2024 Noble Numbat. That release brought Linux kernel 6.8, systemd 255.4, and Netplan 1.0 with a stable API plus simultaneous WPA2/WPA3 support. Its toolchain defaults to GCC 14, Python 3.12, and Rust 1.75. GNOME 46 arrived too, joined by the new Ubuntu App Center, rewritten in Flutter to replace the Snap Store.

The whole 24.04 LTS line stays under official support until 31 May 2029. That is five years out. Drop in Ubuntu Pro and it stretches to ten years, or 12 with the Legacy add-on. A decent amount of runway for anyone still on Noble, and probably more than most people need.

Keep in mind that the next LTS, 26.04 "Resolute Raccoon," is where Ubuntu's eye is pointed right now. Nothing here forces you to look that way yet though.

Head here to grab the corrected Desktop image. Upgrading from 22.04 LTS triggers an automatic offer through Update Manager, and it comes free, as upgrades like this always do.