UbuntuBSD developer Jon Boden has been extremely proud to announce today, August 9, 2016, the release and immediate availability of the first Beta development milestone towards the upcoming UbuntuBSD 16.04 operating system.

Dubbed "A New Hope," the UbuntuBSD 16.04 Beta 1 release is based on Canonical's Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) GNU/Linux distribution and borrows the kernel from the FreeBSD 10.3 operating system. As usual, Xfce is used as the default desktop environment, and the OS features a new init system based on OpenRC and BusyBox.

"The first BETA iso for the upcoming v16.04 release is out! This release is codenamed 'A New Hope' and it is based on powerful platforms such as Ubuntu Xenial and FreeBSD 10.3," says Jon Boden in today's forum announcement. "It features a new init system based on BusyBox and OpenRC."

Final UbuntuBSD 16.04 release coming later in the year

UbuntuBSD is a unique project that promises to combine the stability and reliability of the FreeBSD kernel with the familiarity and ease of use of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution. It is inspired by the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD project but based on some of the most up-to-date and innovative technologies from both the GNU/Linux and BSD world.

UbuntuBSD 16.04 Beta 1 is now available for download via our website. The operating system is currently distributed as an installable-only ISO image for 64-bit platforms. When testing it, please keep in mind that you'll have to install the OS on your PC, which will occupy the entire disk space.

The final release of the UbuntuBSD 16.04 operating system should be available later in the year with new features and dozens of improvements that will be revealed in the coming months. Below you can see the BusyBox/OpenRC init system in action, as well as the UbuntuBSD 16.04 Xfce graphical interface.