Ubuntu Core 24

Ubuntu Core 24 (UC24) is the latest Ubuntu Core release, and is built on the foundations of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat).

With 12 years of Long Term Support, our strictly-confined OS enables developers to build production-grade images for embedded devices on various architectures.

Ubuntu Core 24 delivers a new factory installation system for IoT device makers, GPU support for AIoT and device management with Landscape in its fifth LTS release. We’ve also added support for the Raspberry Pi 5.

New features for this release include:

  • Improved GPU integration
  • Device management with Landscape
  • Edge and cloud integration with Azure IoT Edge
  • New ROS integration for robotics developers
  • New documentation and documentation structure

In addition to the above, Ubuntu Core 24 bundles both the latest Linux Kernel 6.8 and systemd 2.55 and includes all the latest features of snapd, including Dynamic kernel boot parameters, Quota group limits for Journal log and Offline remodelling.

Support for Ubuntu Core has also been added to Multipass, for single-command deployment.

See Get started with Ubuntu Core to build your own image, or to try a pre-built image of Ubuntu Core 24.

Improved GPU integration

This release improves hardware compatibility through updated graphics drivers and optimises resource utilisation via a shared userspace environment. For more information, please review the interface documentation.

Developers can use the GPU interface to embed graphical applications with graphics acceleration, making it a robust platform to deploy interactive kiosks, digital signage solutions, or any other products that require a graphical output.

Ubuntu Frame, Ubuntu Core display server, also has new features, including support for hybrid GPU systems, multi-display device solutions, screen locking, seamless boot, support for drag and drop, power-saving displays, remote assistance support, runtime display layout modification, and a new user-configurable diagnostic screen. For more information please visit Ubuntu Frame’s documentation.

Access to Nvidia drivers will be available by Q4 this year due to Nvidia’s licensing policy.

Device management with Landscape

Ubuntu Core 24 offers a new integration with Landscape, Canonical’s systems management tool, to enable efficient device management, security and updates.

This new integration offers centralised control of OTA updates, auditing, access control, and compliance across devices. Landscape supports both well-connected and air-gapped environments. It comes with features like canary releases, remote device remodelling, and system monitoring to streamline device management tasks.

Landscape is available for Core customers. Users with an Ubuntu Pro subscription can also use Landscape to manage up to 5 machines for free. To learn more visit the Landscape Client snap package documentation.

Edge and cloud integration with Azure IoT Edge

The Azure IoT Edge Agent snaps deliver seamless integration of Ubuntu Core devices with Microsoft Azure cloud.

These snaps enable organisations to deploy, manage, and monitor OCI edge workloads across fleets of compatible devices directly from Azure.

New ROS integration for robotics developers

Core 24 delivers production-ready integrations for developers deploying solutions with the Robot Operating System (ROS).

Canonical has made ROS foundational snaps available for modular deployments. These snaps are maintained by Canonical, and include sets of common ROS packages, such as ros_core, ros_base or desktop, available in several flavours per ROS distribution. With them, developers can design modular ROS snap deployments, enabling configurability and reducing overall memory and OTA update bandwidth.

New documentation and documentation structure

Our documentation has been restructured to primarily support image building, which is focus for Ubuntu Core. This includes a step-by-step Build your first Ubuntu Core image tutorial, new documentation on Using ubuntu-image, and including the console-conf for device onboarding, plus an overhauled First steps with Ubuntu Core.

We’ve also removed a lot of the duplication in the Ubuntu Core documentation and the snapcraft.io/docs documentation, and we now have in-depth guides on Creating a recovery system from the REST API, calculating partition sizes,

There’s also a new section on using Ubuntu Core to host containers, with how-to guides on Running Docker containers and on building your own Docker-snap to deploy containers from an image.

Further improvements

This release adds many other new features, including:

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