With Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) out the door, the Ubuntu developers are not wasting any time, and they've already started to work on the upcoming Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus).

Therefore, we've happy to inform you that the first Live ISO images for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS have been made available earlier today, October 27, 2015, for the first time ever, and Softpedia is the first to report on it.

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) daily build ISOs are available to anyone willing to take them for a test drive. They are heavily based on Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf), so don't expect any massive changes in their design and software collection.

The Ubuntu 16.04 LTS development cycle will take place over the next six months, and it will conclude with the final release, which is currently scheduled for April 21, 2016, during which there will be two Alpha and two Beta builds.

For now, the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS ISO images are distributed for both 64-bit (amd64) and 32-bit (i386) hardware architectures, and are available for download right now from Softpedia.

A little warning for those attempting to download Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus): please keep in mind that these are very early previews of the upcoming operating system, and you should not install them on a production environment.

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS will soon be rebased on Linux kernel 4.3

If you're reading Softpedia Linux a lot, you would know that Linux kernel 4.3 is currently in development and a seventh RC (Release Candidate) build was made available for download and testing this past weekend.

Ubuntu developers have already opened the repositories for Xenial, tracking Ubuntu 15.10's Linux 4.2 kernel in the master branch, while rebasing the master-next branch to Linux kernel 4.3 RC7.

The final release of Linux kernel 4.3 will see the light of day sometime next week, which means that future ISO images of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS will be rebased on it. However, we believe that the final build of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS will be powered by Linux kernel 4.4.