What's new in Ubuntu 24.04.2? Kernel 6.11, better graphics, and more

Before you get too excited, point releases rarely (if ever) deliver exciting new features, and that holds true with Ubuntu.

Point releases (in this case, .2) tend to be more about bug fixes, performance improvements, application upgrades, and security patches. But that doesn’t mean they’re always boring. These point releases almost always make the distribution better in more ways than one.

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So what’s new in 24.04.2? Let’s find out.

A new kernel

The big-ticket item in this latest point release is a new Hardware Enablement Stack (HWE) that includes kernel 6.11. Although it’s not the latest kernel (which is 6.13.4), it’s an important one because it improves in so many areas, including:

Hardware support

• New driver subsystem for Bluetooth/WLAN chips on Qualcomm platforms
• Support for AMD’s RDNA4 graphics architecture
• Improved support for Intel NPUs in Meteor Lake and newer chipsets
• Enhanced AMD P-State driver with Core Performance Boost control and AMD Fast CPPC support

Performance and security

• getrandom() support in vDSO for x86 systems, improving efficient access to randomness
• Dedicated bucket slab allocator to protect against heap-spraying attacks
• Initial support for AMD’s SEV-SNP (Secure Encrypted Virtualization – Secure Nested Paging)
• AES-GCM decryption/encryption is up to 160% faster on modern AMD and Intel processors

File systems and storage

• Rewritten disk accounting scheme for bcachefs
• New ‘rescue=’ mount options for Btrfs
• Support for block drivers written in Rust
• EXT4 performance boost of ~20% for fast devices using async direct I/O

Virtualization and architecture support

• Virtual CPU hotplug support for AArch64 (ARM64) ACPI systems
• KVM support for SEV-SNP encrypted guests
• NUMA support for RISC-V ACPI-based systems
• Memory hotplug and STACKLEAK support for RISC-V architecture

Networking and system calls

• New uretprobe system call for faster uretprobes
• Binary interface for /proc//maps
• iommufd facility to deliver IO page faults to user space

Graphics

Along with the kernel, there’s a new graphics stack for 24.04.2. That stack includes Mesa 24.2.8 graphics drivers, which improve compatibility with any hardware released after the first iteration of the 24.0 LTS was made available.

For those who don’t know, Mesa is an open-source implementation of various graphics APIs, such as OpenGL and Vulkan. The stack includes the following:

• Implementation of graphics APIs
• Driver architecture
• Display resource management
• Interface and driver connectivity
• User-space drivers

The Mesa 24.2.8 release was primarily for bug fixes.

Other improvements/updates

As for the rest of the updates, it’s about new software, such as libdrm 2.4.122, GNOME Shell 46.0, LibreOffice 24.2.7, and Firefox 135.

As per usual, Ubuntu doesn’t release “bleeding-edge” software, so it might seem the included software is a bit out of date. That’s intentional to ensure the distribution ships with the most stable version of any given application.

You’ll also find improvements such as:

• Enhanced firmware support for Intel Lunar Lake, Arrow Lake, and next-generation Ethernet adapters
• Broadened AMD GPU driver coverage (such as support for Instinct MI300 series)
• Improved installer (along with fixes for hardware-specific installation issues)
• Updated container runtimes
• Better AppArmor profile handling
• Improved PipeWire audio routing

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You can either run a distribution upgrade (if you already have Ubuntu 24.04 installed), or you can download an ISO of the latest release from the official download site. If you’re interested in the full release notes, read them here.