How to Upgrade to Ubuntu 24.04 'Noble Numbat' [Step by Step Guide]

Post By Linux Social December 30, 2023 Post a Comment

This is a step by step beginner’s guide shows Ubuntu Desktop users how to upgrade to Ubuntu 24.04 Noble Numbat from either Ubuntu 22.04, 23.04 and Ubuntu 23.10.

Tim Holmes-Mitra with Canonical has shared some roadmap highlights for the Ubuntu desktop with the in-development Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

In addition to work lower down the stack with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS set to enable frame pointers by default and experimenting with x86-64-v3 builds, higher up the stack they are also planning for desktop enhancements with this Long Term Support release.

Among the Ubuntu 24.04 LTS desktop plans are:

The Linux-Flutter engine is being upgraded to use GTK4.
Given the issue of malicious translations in Ubuntu 23.10, Canonical will be setting up their own self-hosted Weblate instance and ensure every language is gate-kept by a trusted translator.
Continued work on their Flutter-based apps like the Ubuntu Firmware Updater.
Plans to expose re-encryption for their hardware-backed full disk encryption solution.
Various other security improvements like a new network section in the Security Center where they can enable a local stealth mode or easily toggle their firewall.
GNOME 46 is the planned desktop version for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.
Canonical continues to have "ongoing discussions about sun setting X11" but for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, they will still be keepping 24.04 LTS around it seems: "In Ubuntu 24.04 LTS we’re not ready to make that leap. For this cycle, we’ve decided to audit the state of NVIDIA + Wayland to define the signals we want to see in order to make that call."
Improvements around Snap updating.
Implementing MFA support in SSH and building SSO-support into the desktop.

Before getting started:

Before start upgrading your OS, you have to do some preparations to avoid failure and speed up upgrading process.

First, backup, backup, backup! The upgrade process MAY FAIL, due to internet corrupt, hardware issue, and/or package conflict. If the upgrade process failed, your system MAY refuse to boot. So, it’s important to make backup, though, you can mount the disk in another OS to export user data.
Remove useless applications. It will try to upgrade all installed packages to the higher versions in 23.10 system repository. So removing useless packages, such as non-default desktop environments, results less downloading to speed up upgrading process. Though, it’s totally OK to skip this step.
Restore important libraries. If you’ve installed 3rd party versions of multimedia (e.g., FFmpeg) libraries, it’s highly recommended to uninstall/restore to avoid package conflict.