After more than two months of Beta testing, System76 finally announced the release of Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS.

As the version number indicates, Pop!_OS 24.04 is based on Ubuntu 24.04, but features Linux Kernel 6.17 and its new COSMIC desktop environment.

Pop!_OS 24.04

Pop!_OS is developed by System76, a American Linux computer manufacturer. It features COSMIC desktop, which was previously a customized GNOME desktop, but now a standalone desktop environment built from scratch.

The new desktop environment is written in the Rust programming language for high performance and memory safety. It replaced Nautilus, Gnome Terminal, Gnome Text Editor, Totem with its own COSMIC specific files, terminal, text editor, and video player apps.

Pop!_Shop is replaced by COSMIC Store, which supports both Flatpak and Deb out-of-the-box. And, the GDM display manager is replaced by new COSMIC Greeter with a redesigned login appearance.

COSMIC Store

The new desktop improved window tiling support. It added a toggle in system tray indicator, allowing to tile all current workspace windows by single-click. The icon changes automatically according to the window tiling status. And, it supports drag’n’drop exchange window position in tiling mode.

Besides using indicator menu, it also support tiling windows via keyboard shortcuts, and tiling in per display basis.

The workspaces can now displayed in either vertical or horizontal orientation. Multiple displays can have separated or spanned workspaces. And, it supports pinning workspace and drag’n’drop re-arranging workspace or even moving to another display.

Pop!_OS 24.04 also improved multiple monitors support. Besides per display window tiling and multi-display workspaces mentioned above, it also improved the experience for displays with mixed HiDPI and standard resolutions.

Displays are automatically scaled based on pixel density and display scaling can be fine-tuned in Settings. And, it will remember your display settings and restore automatically next time you plug it in.

Moreover, it added hybrid graphics support. Apps request the discrete GPU will automatically run on the correct GPU, while user may right-click on app icon to choose which GPU to use at launch.

Other changes in Pop!_OS 24.04 include:

• New stack windows feature to combine multiple app windows into single in tabs, just like web browser.
• NVIDIA 580 driver out-of-the-box.
• ARM computers support.
• Support reinstalling the OS anytime while keeping files, settings, and Flatpak user applications

For more, see the official release note.

Download or Upgrade to Pop!_OS 24.04

Pop!_OS 24.04 is available to download in its website via the link below:

It recommends 4 GB RAM, 16 GB disk space, and 64-bit ARM or X86_64 processors. While, NVIDIA edition asks for GeForce 16 series graphics or newer.

And for Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS, user may run the single command below in terminal to upgrade to Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS:

pop-upgrade release upgrade -f

Though it’s always recommended to back up your files first.

For users of Ubuntu MATE and Ubuntu Unity, the 2 Linux Distributions will NOT be the official flavors for the next Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.

Ubuntu announced the LTS qualifications for Resolute Raccoon in last week:

We haven’t seen LTS requalification requests from Ubuntu MATE nor Ubuntu Unity, so these will release subject to release team approval, and they will be non-LTS.

As you know, the Ubuntu flavors are the community maintained distributions with different desktop environments or specific intended use case. So far, Ubuntu has 10 official flavors, they are listed in this Ubuntu web-page.

Ubuntu always requires the official flavors to go through a qualification process for every releases, especially for LTS. For next Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, the following flavors have been approved with three year LTS qualification.

• Ubuntu Budgie
• Ubuntu Kylin
• Xubuntu
• Lubuntu
• Edubuntu
• Ubuntu Studio
• Ubuntu Cinnamon

What About KUbuntu 26.04

KUbuntu 24.04

KUbuntu is not mentioned in the announcement. And, I didn’t see the qualification request for KUbuntu 26.04 in the Technical Board.

The KUbuntu developer, Scarlett Gately Moore, was in a car accident in last July. Though back to work now, she needs a little help.

Rik Mills, another KUbuntu developer who’s also Ubuntu core developer, is actively building packages for Ubuntu 26.04 and backporting Plasma desktop and KDE frameworks for current Ubuntu release through KUbuntu PPAs.

IMO, KDE Plasma is so popular and maintainers are still actively working, there’s no reason to exclude KUbuntu 26.04 as one of the next official LTS flavors.

Why Ubuntu MATE and Ubuntu Unity Excluded

Ubuntu MATE 24.04

Ubuntu MATE is Ubuntu with MATE desktop environment, a continuation of the classic GNOME 2. It was firstly approved as official flavor when it was in version 15.04.

MATE in current Ubuntu releases is still at version 1.26, while the latest MATE 1.28 has been released for more than a year. Debian upstream has started packaging MATE 1.28 for Forky and Ubuntu 26.04, though Ubuntu MATE developer missed the LTS qualification.

According to the future of Ubuntu MATE discussion, it seems that the project lead, Martin Wimpress, is now having other interests and obligations (Nøughty Linux), so he didn’t apply the re-qualification requests.

For Ubuntu Unity, the official flavor since 22.10, the project lead Rudra Saraswat, is too busy because of university exams and tests.

Other members lack of knowledge to maintain the project, and Maik Adamietz asked for help by this thread in discrouse few months ago, but without luck. And, they didn’t even know the requalification process so missed the deadline for next 26.04 LTS.

For current Ubuntu MATE and Ubuntu Unity users

Without Ubuntu MATE or Ubuntu Unity, Ubuntu 26.04 can install the 2 desktop environments from the system repositories, though they will be less stable due to lack of desktop specific maintenance.

According to this discourse page, 24.04 users may stay with it until 2034, by enabling Ubuntu Pro for security maintenance, though Canonical does not offer phone or ticket support for Community Flavors.