Canonical has announced the availability of Ubuntu 23.10 Mantic Minotaur for download. The new release comes with a new Application Center that makes it easier to discover new applications and offers a preview of hardware-accelerated full-disk encryption with key storage in the Trusted Platform Module (TPM). The company stated that Ubuntu 23.10 forms the basis for the next long-term support (LTS) release, which is scheduled for April 2024.
New Features in Ubuntu 23.10 Mantic Minotaur
As mentioned earlier, the primary change users will notice in Ubuntu 23.10 is the new Application Center. Canonical emphasizes the center’s speed, intuitiveness, and user-friendliness, as well as its support for both snap and deb package formats. The Application Center fetches rich metadata from the Canonical Snap Store to better inform users about the applications they wish to download.
Another significant change in this update is the preview support for hardware-accelerated full-disk encryption. Canonical hopes to offer broader hardware support and more configuration and management options for this feature in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.
Another security change in this update is the additional mode supported by the Ubuntu kernel, which enforces an AppArmor Profile requiring Ubuntu to use unprivileged user namespaces. The company asserts that this will reduce the need for kernel interfaces that typically require root privileges and can pose significant security vulnerabilities.
Canonical mentions that many common applications, such as web browsers, utilize unprivileged user namespaces and usually expose restricted kernel interfaces. Applications in the Ubuntu repositories now come with AppArmor profiles to ensure compliance with this new policy when enabled.
Ubuntu 23.10, a non-LTS version, will only be supported for nine months. While sticking to LTS versions is generally recommended for most users, if you are running Ubuntu 22.10 or 23.04, it’s advisable to upgrade to Ubuntu 23.10.
To download Ubuntu 23.10, visit the Ubuntu Downloads page and navigate to the Ubuntu 23.10 section. If you can run Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, you can run Ubuntu 23.10 as well since the system requirements are the same.
