Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS Planned For Release 1 March

The delayed Ubuntu 16.04.4 point release is now expected to become available at the start of March.

Ubuntu 16.04.4 had been due to ship this week but back in January it was decided it was going to be delayed by a few weeks due to Canonical having all hands on deck around the Spectre and Meltdown mitigation work.

Now that their Spectre/Meltdown mitigation work is getting under control and back-ported to supported Ubuntu kernel builds, focus is shifting back to getting out this next Ubuntu LTS point release.

Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS will incorporate the stable release updates up to this point and other kernel back-ports needed for customers/users and other minor updates. Of course, the April release of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is the next big feature release.

Canonical's Lukasz Zemczak posted that they are planning on 1 March as the new ship date for 16.04.4. "We expect to have all the required pieces available in the archive by that time and will provide images with all the necessary security fixes in place."