Canonical unveils 6th LTS release of Ubuntu with 16.04 Xenial Xerus

jeremy · 04-21-2016, 09:36 AM

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Canonical announced today it will release Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on 21st April, featuring the new ‘snap’ package format and LXD pure-container hypervisor. This is the latest version of the world’s most widely used Linux platform across desktop, IoT and cloud computing.

“The leading cloud-based operations and the most advanced robotics run largely on Ubuntu, and this new release is the basis for the next wave of their innovation” said Mark Shuttleworth, Founder of Canonical. “We are proud to serve the needs of the enterprise, and research, and millions of personal and non-profit users, with one single shared free software platform”.

An Ubuntu Long Term Support (LTS) release is supported and maintained by Canonical for five years, making it the most stable, reliable, secure and cost-effective Linux platform for long-term, large-scale deployments. This is the 6th such LTS release for Ubuntu, and marks the first time that the platform is supported on mainframes, the world’s largest and most powerful Linux systems.

New features in this release enable faster and simpler software delivery and operations. “The addition of ‘snaps’ for faster and simpler updates, and the LXD container hypervisor for ultra-fast and ultra-dense cloud computing, demonstrate a commitment to customer needs that sets Ubuntu apart as the platform for innovation and scale,” said Dustin Kirkland who leads platform strategy at Canonical.

Introduces “snaps” for new robust, secure app format

Introduces LXD pure-container hypervisor with OpenStack Mitaka

Supports IBM Z and LinuxONE systems with flat pricing

Steps towards converged Ubuntu across IOT, Phone, Desktop and Server

Introduces ZFS and CephFS for large-scale cloud storage

Some numbers from Dustin Kirkland's Blog:

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6: This is our 6th Ubuntu LTS
6.06, 8.04, 10.04, 12.04, 14.04, 16.04
7: With Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, we're supporting 7 CPU architectures
armhf, arm64, i386, amd64, powerpc, ppc64el, s390x
25,671: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS is comprised of 25,671 source packages
main, universe, restricted, multiverse
150,562+: Over 150,562 (and counting!) cloud instances of Xenial have launched to date
and we haven't even officially released yet!
216,475: A complete archive of all binary .deb packages in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS consists of 216,475 debs.
24,803 arch independent
27,159 armhf
26,845 arm64
28,730 i386
28,902 amd64
27,061 powerpc
26,837 ppc64el
26,138 s390x
1,426,792,926: A total line count of all source packages in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS using cloc yields 1,426,792,926 total lines of source code
250,478,341,568: A complete archive all debs, all architectures in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS requires 250GB of disk space

Yes, that's 1.4 billion lines of source code comprising the entire Ubuntu 16.04 LTS archive. What an amazing achievement of open source development!

Do LQ members plan on updating to Xenial Xerus?

--jeremy

jeremy · 04-21-2016, 11:21 AM

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Xenial Xerus Screencast and Screenshots

--jeremy