Canonical officially released Ubuntu 23.10 "Mantic Minotaur" today, and provides a new Application Center (AppCenter) to make it easier for users to find new applications, and previews support for hardware-supported full disk encryption (keys are stored in the Trusted Platform Module TPM). The company said Ubuntu 23.10 lays the foundation for the next long-term support (LTS) version to be released in April 2024.

The main change that users will see is the new App Center. Canonical ensures it's fast, intuitive, user-friendly, and supports both snap and deb package formats. App Center fetches rich metadata from CanonicalSnapStore to better inform users of the apps they want to download.

Another big change with this update is that the preview version supports hardware-backed full-disk encryption. Canonical expects to provide broader hardware support and more configuration and management options for this feature in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

Another security change in this update is that the Ubuntu kernel now supports an additional mode that forces programs to have an AppArmorProfile when using an unprivileged user namespace. The company says this will reduce the number of kernel interfaces that typically require root privileges, thereby reducing major security vulnerabilities.

Canonical said that many common applications, such as web browsers, use unprivileged user namespaces and expose often restricted kernel interfaces; this was dangerous, so it made the change. Apps in Ubuntu archives now come with AppArmor profiles to ensure they comply with new policies when they are enabled.

As a non-LTS release, Ubuntu 23.10 is only supported for nine months. For most people, it's best to stick with the LTS versions, but if you're running Ubuntu 22.10 or 23.04, then you should upgrade to Ubuntu 23.10.

To download Ubuntu23.10, just head to the Ubuntu download page and scroll down to the Ubuntu23.10 section:

https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop

According to the page, if you can run Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, then you can also run Ubuntu 23.10, as the system requirements are the same.