The development of Ubuntu 16.10 Yakkety Yak started days (or hours) after the release of the current version, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. At first there was little of the Yakkety Yak brand and practically 100% of the system was based on Xenial Xerus, but little by little the version that will be launched in October of this year is taking shape and will include, installed by default, the Unity 8 graphical environment, although if we want to use it we will have to activate it from the login.
What we are going to talk about today is the Linux Kernel that Ubuntu 16.10 will use. Right now, the next standard version of Ubuntu uses the same version as version 16.04, but they will soon switch to the latest stable version, Linux Kernel 4.6. Later they will start using the versions release Candidate of Linux Kernel 4.7, but the thing will not stop there and, when it is officially released, Ubuntu 16.10 will use Linux Kernel 4.8.
Ubuntu 16.10 will use Linux Kernel 4.8
Our Yakkety kernel tree is still a carbon copy of our Xenial kernel. In any case, we have a v4.6-based kernel in our unstable repository and we hope to upload it to the archive for preliminary testing soon. Then we'll start to beat it in v4.7-rc. Also, as we have reported in other bulletins, we are targeting a v4.8-based kernel for the 16.10 release.
Development of the Linux Kernel 4.8 will begin sometime this summer, a week after the Linux Kernel 4.7 release which is scheduled for July 17th or 24th. V4.8 could be a LTS version, which means that you will have long-term support. Its official release will take place sometime in September, a month before the release of Ubuntu 16.10. As I have mentioned before, Yakkety Yak will include the Unity 8 graphical environment installed by default as an option, but the desktop with which it will start if we do not change it will remain Unity 7. To tell the truth, I am looking forward to testing Unity 8 when it works properly . And you?