Every two years, Canonical releases what it refers to as an LTS, or a long-term support, version of its open-source Ubuntu Linux operating system. On April 21, Ubuntu 16.04 (also known as the Xenial Xerus) made its debut as the first LTS update since Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr) was released in 2014. Ubuntu 16.04 provides users on the desktop, server and cloud with a new operating system that will be supported for five years (until 2021). Among the highlighted capabilities that Canonical is including in the new release is the Snappy transactional update package system. With Snappy, applications are packaged as "Snaps," which can be updated quicker than a traditional Linux package format. To help developers package apps for Snappy, Canonical has created the Snapcraft tool for building and deploying Snaps. On the server side, container deployment gets a boost with the LXD container hypervisor technology. With LXD, containers can run in a secured system process, enabling better performance as well as application density. For the cloud, Ubuntu 16.04 integrates the recently released OpenStack Mitaka cloud platform. akes a look at some of the features in the Ubuntu 14.04 Linux release.
- eWeek