14 DAY TRIAL // Just a few moments ago, March 22, 2016, Canonical's Adam Conrad announced that the upcoming Final Beta build of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating is officially in Feature Freeze.
In two days, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS will finally be available for beta testing as Canonical will release the Final Beta ISO images to users worldwide, so they can help test the operating system before it hits final production later this spring, on April 21, 2016.
Canonical's development cycle for Ubuntu Linux only includes a single, final Beta build of the operating system, while the rest of the opt-in flavors participate in the Alpha 1, Alpha 2, and Beta 1 milestones.
"As of about two minutes ago, xenial has entered the final beta freeze, with a goal of releasing Final Beta images sometime late Thursday," said Adam Conrad on behalf of the Ubuntu Release Team. "The queue freeze will last from now until final release in April."
Feature Freeze for Ubuntu Linux means that the addition of new features to the upcoming OS has stopped, and from this point only critical bugs will be fixed until the final version of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS hits the streets.
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Final Beta available for download on March 24
This Thursday, March 24, users will be able to download the Live ISO images of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) Final Beta, which will be made available for both 64-bit and 32-bit hardware architectures, powered by the latest long-term supported Linux 4.4 kernel.
While it is not recommended, you can install the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Final Beta on your computer as it should be quite stable when compared with the daily builds. We are already running the upcoming operating system on our computers and we can confirm that it works flawlessly.
As part of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Final Beta release, you'll also be able to download the rest of the official flavors, including Ubuntu MATE 16.04, Xubuntu 16.04, Lubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu GNOME 16.04, Ubuntu Studio 16.04, Ubuntu Kylin 16.04, and Kubuntu 16.04.
Please note that Edubuntu Linux won't be released as part of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. Don't forget to mark your calendars and visit our Linux section on Thursday, March 24, as we will publish detailed announcements with the new features for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, as well as most of the flavors mentioned above.