An oracular spectacular draws near…

Ubuntu 24.10 Beta is Now Available to Download

A beta of Ubuntu 24.10 ‘Oracular Oriole’ is now available to download – a day later than planned!

Developers and non-developers alike can download the beta to try the new features in Ubuntu 24.10, check compatibility, and flag any issue for fixing before the stable release takes flight next month.

This is the only beta release planned, though a release candidate will follow in few weeks time. If you install this beta you can upgrade to the final release by installing updates daily.

Chances are know all that, so skip on down to the download section to grab the (larger ever) ISO for Intel/AMD, or ARM64 if your a Pi-fiend.

Or continue reading for a top-level overview of what’s new – there’s a fair bit!

Ubuntu 24.10 Beta Overview

The latest GNOME 47 release sits at the heart of Ubuntu 24.10 (not most of its flavours – also out in beta builds today) with the venerable desktop environment ships several significant improvements across GNOME Shell, GTK4/libadwaita, settings, and core apps.

Of note, the Nautilus file manager has a redesigned sidebar with new options; an cleaner, leaner Network page for connecting to and browsing remote mounts, and contextual information on why some searches initiated in the app may be slower to return results.

This beta also ships the latest Linux 6.11 kernel, which offers better power efficiency on AMD PCs, an EXT4 performance boost, and expands support for hardware devices like graphics tablets.

Fancy a deeper look?
These are the best new features in Ubuntu 24.10

NVIDIA users now get an Ubuntu Wayland session by default. Anyone experiencing issues with it can log out and log in to an X session instead.

A new Security Center app is preinstalled in Ubuntu 24.10 for all desktop users. This works with the (also new) Prompting Client to give users more control over folder permissions for snap apps.

App Center refinements include important tweaks to the ‘Manage’ page, making it easier to see when snaps are updating, and to uninstall snaps you no longer want without having to open their listing.

Ubuntu Dock shows a progress bar on pinned snap apps when they’re updating in the background.

Finally Ubuntu 24.10 marks the 20th anniversary of Ubuntu’s first release. A number of anniversary features are included, ranging from a ‘warty’ brown accent colour to the return of the very first Ubuntu login sound – no, not the iconic drum one!

That is just a surface level overview as I’ve written a lengthy post detailing the most notable changes in Ubuntu 24.10 so if you’re keen to know more – a lot more – about this release check that out (there’s a promo pod floating somewhere on this page).

Download Ubuntu 24.10 Beta

You can download the Ubuntu 24.10 Beta from the Ubuntu release server right now. It’s available for 64-bit Intel/AMD devices (a hefty 6 GB in size), or as a pre-installed image for Raspberry Pi (3 GB).

As I said at the start, you can upgrade an Ubuntu beta to the final release very easily. Just keep installing all updates. By release day, your system will have the same set of packages as a fresh install (and perhaps a touch of cruft they won’t).

If you like Ubuntu but prefer a different desktop environment be sure to check out the beta builds of the official Ubuntu flavours.

It will be possible to upgrade to Ubuntu 24.10 from Ubuntu 24.04, but if you don’t want to use the command line you’ll to wait until October (and you need to ‘opt-in’ as Ubuntu LTS releases only notify of LTS upgrades by default. The next LTS is due 2026).