The Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus Beta 2 is here. But what does Ubuntu mean? Ubuntu in the Zulu language means Human Kindness. The term is also often translated as "humanity to others", but is also used in a more philosophical sense meaning "the belief in a universal bond of participation that binds all humanity".
In South Africa, it has been used as a term for a kind of humanistic philosophy, ethics or ideology, also known as Ubuntuism or Hunhuism.
From this philosophy, it was named the Ubuntu operating system. It is a Debian-based operating system and is used for personal computers, smartphones, servers, cloud and tablets. Uses Unity as its default user interface.
Ubuntu is responsible for Canonical Ltd. based on the United Kingdom. The company is owned by businessman Mark Shuttleworth from South Africa. Canonical has revenue from the sale of technical support and other services related to Ubuntu.
The Ubuntu project has been publicly committed to the principles of open source software development. So anyone with the necessary knowledge can study it, change it, improve it and distribute it.
Each default installation of Ubuntu contains a wide range of software including LibreOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, Transmission, and various light games such as Sudoku and Chess. Of course, there are many additional software packages, such as Evolution, GIMP, Pidgin, and Synaptic, accessible from the Ubuntu Embedded Software Center, as well as any other APT-based package management tool.
Ubuntu project runs under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and all software installed by default is free software.
New Features in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
Updated Packages
As with any new version, all apps and software packages have been updated. Many of these packages come from auto-sync from Debian and others have been created for Ubuntu 16.04 only.
Linux kernel 4.4
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS is based on the LTS Linux kernel 4.4.
Python 3.5
Python has been upgraded to 3.5.
If you have Python 2-based programs, fear not. Python 2 will continue to be available. However, to support better future versions of Ubuntu should be ported to Python 3. Of course, the developers will do this for you.
Golang 1.6
The golang toolchain was upgraded to 1.6, and gcc-go was upgraded to GCC6.
Ubuntu for IBM LinuxONE
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS includes a new 64-bit z/Architecture port for IBM mainframes computers. It is an almost complete port of Ubuntu Server and Cloud with about 95% availability in binary packages.
Let's see what's new in Ubuntu 16.04 desktop
The 16.04 desktop version brings many bug fixes and quality improvements.
GNOME has been upgraded to 3.18. GLib has been upgraded to 2,48 (corresponding to GNOME 3.20)
GNOME Software replaces it Ubuntu Software Center.
All default applications and libraries use WebKit 2.
The GNOME Calendar is included by default.
Empathy and Brasero applications were removed from the default installation
Chromium upgraded to 48 and Firefox upgraded to 45
Online dash searches have been disabled by default (at last).
Improved HiDPI support in greeter.
More languages added and supported by default
Multiple bug fixes
Download Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) Beta 2
http://releases.ubuntu.com/xenial/
Official flavors
The release notes for all official flavors can be found in the links below:
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Mythbuntu https://wiki.ubuntu.com/XenialXerus/Beta2/Mythbuntu
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Ubuntu GNOME https://wiki.ubuntu.com/XenialXerus/Beta2/UbuntuGNOME
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Ubuntu Kylin (Chinese version of Ubuntu) https://wiki.ubuntu.com/XenialXerus/Beta2/UbuntuKylin
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Ubuntu MATE https://wiki.ubuntu.com/XenialXerus/Beta2/UbuntuMATE
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Ubuntu Studio https://wiki.ubuntu.com/XenialXerus/ReleaseNotes/Beta2/UbuntuStudio
With information from WikiPedia and Ubuntu
