Canonical Releases Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on April 21, 2016

The next Long Term Support release of Ubuntu will be released on April 21, 2016. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS codenamed Xenial Xerus will have Linux kernel 4.4 under the hood along with Unity 7. An lts version will be supported for five years. Regular releases have nine months of support.

With the release of Ubuntu 15.10 Whily Werewolf still fresh in our minds, Canonical is announcing the release date for the next lts version, including the intermediate dates for the alphas, betas and the release candidate. It is not yet clear exactly what changes will be made, but because it is an lts version, there is little chance that major changes can be expected. For example, Unity 7 is maintained as the default for Ubuntu. OmgUbuntu reports that there may be a new icon pack and that Linux kernel 4.4 will be used.

The first alpha version is scheduled for December 31, after which the first beta should see the light of day just under two months later on February 25. With beta 1, all features are also frozen, after which no new applications, packages or APIs are allowed into the development process. From the feature freeze, the development team will focus solely on bug fixes, unless something comes along that falls under the FreezeExceptionProcess. The kernel freeze will follow on April 7, after which the release candidate will be practically the final version on April 14. Thursday 21 April 2016 is the day on which release parties can take place.

The current lts version 14.04 will be supported until October 2019. Ubuntu 15.10 loses its update path as early as October 2016.

Ubuntu support cycle (source: Ubuntu.com)