Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Xenial Xerus Makes Its Debut

Canonical on Thursday launched Ubuntu 16.04, aka "Xenial Xerus," an upgrade that will be supported for the next five years.

The latest version for all desktop, server and cloud editions will be available for download starting Thursday.

Ubuntu 16.04 includes four major technology advancements geared toward multiplatform uses. Xenial Xerus is the sixth Long Term Support release for Ubuntu. It marks the first time the platform is supported on mainframes, making it one of the world's largest and most powerful Linux systems, the company said.

The new features will provide faster and simpler software delivery and operations and will form the foundation of many builds based on Ubuntu for every sector of IT, Canonical CEO Jane Silber said during a conference call announcing the release.

Canonical will begin to phase in a rolling package upgrading system during the current release cycle, she said.

"Snap is a fully functional feature in this release," Silber noted. "It is easy to update -- expect updates through four-to-six week cycles. Snap on the desktop will get the same treatment as phone updates. We will start to see more over-the-air updates."

Ubuntu 16.04 brings LXD, a pure-container hypervisor that delivers 14 times the density and much greater speed for Linux guest compared to established traditional virtualization. LXD is part of LXC 2.0, the latest release of the Linux Containers project, and the basis for almost all Platform as a Service infrastructures in production today, according to Canonical.