Canonical launches Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

The Ubuntu team is very pleased to announce our sixth long-term support
release, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS for Desktop, Server, Cloud, and Core.

Codenamed "Xenial Xerus", 16.04 LTS continues Ubuntu's proud tradition
of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a
high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at
work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs.

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS is the first long-term support release available for
the new "s390x" architecture for IBM LinuxONE and z Systems, as well
as introducing the new Ubuntu MATE community flavour.

The Linux kernel has been updated to the 4.4.6 longterm maintenance
release, with the addition of ZFS-on-Linux, a combination of a volume
manager and filesystem which enables efficient snapshots, copy-on-write
cloning, continuous integrity checking against data corruption, automatic
filesystem repair, and data compression.

Ubuntu Desktop has seen incremental improvements, with newer versions of
GTK and Qt, updates to major packages like Firefox and LibreOffice, and
stability improvements to Unity.

Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS includes the Mitaka release of OpenStack, along
with the new 2.0 versions of Juju, LXD, and MAAS to save devops teams
time and headache when deploying distributed applications - whether on
private clouds, public clouds, or on developer laptops.

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS introduces a new application format, the 'snap', which
can be installed alongside traditional deb packages. These two packaging
formats live quite comfortably next to one another and enable Ubuntu to
maintain its existing processes for development and updates.

The newest Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Mythbuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, Ubuntu Kylin,
Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Studio, and Xubuntu are also being released today.
More details can be found for these at their individual release notes:

   wiki.ubuntu.com/XenialXerus/ReleaseNotes

Maintenance updates will be provided for 5 years for Ubuntu Desktop,
Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Cloud, Ubuntu Core, and Ubuntu Kylin. All the
remaining flavours will be supported for 3 years.


To get Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
-----------------------

In order to download Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, visit:

   www.ubuntu.com/download

Users of Ubuntu 15.10 will be offered an automatic upgrade to 16.04 LTS
via Update Manager shortly. Users of 14.04 LTS will be offered the
automatic upgrade when 16.04.1 LTS is released, which is scheduled for
July 21st. For further information about upgrading, see:

   www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/upgrade

As always, upgrades to the latest version of Ubuntu are entirely free
of charge.

We recommend that all users read the release notes, which document
caveats, workarounds for known issues, as well as more in-depth notes
on the release itself. They are available at:

   wiki.ubuntu.com/XenialXerus/ReleaseNotes

Find out what's new in this release with a graphical overview:

   www.ubuntu.com/desktop
   www.ubuntu.com/desktop/features

If you have a question, or if you think you may have found a bug
but aren't sure, you can try asking in any of the following places:

   #ubuntu on irc.freenode.net
   lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users
   www.ubuntuforums.org
   askubuntu.com


Help Shape Ubuntu
-----------------

If you would like to help shape Ubuntu, take a look at the list
of ways you can participate at:

   community.ubuntu.com/contribute


About Ubuntu
------------

Ubuntu is a full-featured Linux distribution for desktops, laptops,
netbooks and servers, with a fast and easy installation and regular
releases. A tightly-integrated selection of excellent applications
is included, and an incredible variety of add-on software is just a
few clicks away.

Professional services including support are available from Canonical
and hundreds of other companies around the world. For more information
about support, visit:

   www.ubuntu.com/support