The development cycle is coming to an end

Feb 23, 2016 14:15 GMT  ·  By

A new Beta for Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) is in the works, and we now know what flavors are going to participate.

The development cycle for Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) is getting closer to its end, and the main flavors are preparing for the first Beta, which is set to arrive in just a couple of days. The schedule for Ubuntu 16.04 was revealed a long time ago, and the developers haven't deviated from it.

It's interesting to notice that the interest for these intermediary releases seems to be dwindling, and not all of them want to participate. There was a time when no one would have missed the opportunity, but the teams don't seem to be really anxious in this regard. If anything, it seems that the coordinators are having a hard time convincing people to participate.

Testing the releases

One of the benefits of having a Beta is the fact that the distro goes through some automated testing. In fact, after a flavor agrees to participate in one of these releases, the developers stop pushing updates and focus on building a working ISO.

Canonical dropped these releases a while back, and they only participate with Ubuntu for the last Beta in the series, right before the official launch. It didn't seem to affect them in the least if anything they have more time to focus on the Linux distribution.

The distributions that are going to have their first Beta for Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) are Lubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu Mate, Ubuntu Server Cloud, Ubuntu Studio, and Xubuntu. You might notice that Kubuntu is not present in this configuration.

Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) is expected to land on April 21, and Canonical has promised that it's going to be an amazing release. We already covered some of the new features that are going to be implemented, if you're curious about what they are doing.