Ubuntu 24.10 Desktop To Ship With Sysprof Profiler Pre-Installed

Following Canonical's decision to enable frame pointers by default in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and then they ended up adding a number of performance tools to ship by default with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, for Ubuntu 24.10 a late change is adding another tool to be installed by default on the Ubuntu desktop: Sysprof.

Sysprof as the system-wide performance profiler for Linux systems is now set to be installed by default on Ubuntu 24.10 and moving forward with future Ubuntu Linux releases. Currently users need to sudo apt install sysprof to enjoy this GUI and command-line driven program but now is to be installed by default on the Ubuntu desktop.

While I am a big fan of Canonical's recent focus on performance engineering and am a self-proclaimed Linux performance enthusiast, I am a bit baffled about this decision. Sysprof will only be used by a small subset of users (developers) and those doing low-level Linux system profiling are likely to know how to use Apt or the GUI package manager to install new packages so they could easily install Sysprof themselves. This isn't some Ubuntu Desktop "Developer Edition" or otherwise a specially crafted spin but will see Sysprof being installed on all new Ubuntu desktop installations. It just seems like bloat with so few likely to actually use Sysprof and to be expecting it out-of-the-box when most other Linux distributions aren't shipping it by default.

Confirmation of Sysprof application by default on Ubuntu 24.10 was made via this Ubuntu desktop post and the ubuntu-meta package has been updated for Sysprof. Given that it's late in the cycle, Sysprof app in the default Ubuntu installation also had to go the route of a feature freeze exception. In that feature freeze exception it's argued:

"The Ubuntu Desktop team wishes to install the sysprof app in the default Ubuntu Desktop install for 24.10. This is part of a distro-wide Performance Engineering effort discussed in various places such as https://ubuntu.com/blog/ubuntu-performance-engineering-with-frame-pointers-by-default

For clarification, this change is for both the default and full installation options. This will be done by adding Recommends: sysprof in the ubuntu-desktop-minimal package (and seed). No changes are needed in any other packages. Installing the sysprof app by default has no impact on any other packages."

So with Ubuntu Desktop 24.10 you will have Sysprof available out of the box to do any system-wide performance profiling if you're interested but have been held up by it not being installed out-of-the-box...