Lukasz Zemczak announced on the mailing list that March 1 has been set as the date of the new plan date, given that things are being resolved. “We look forward to providing all the necessary pieces of artwork in the archive at that time and will provide the image with all the necessary security patches.”
At the same time, Ubuntu 17.10 kernel and graphics stack updates will be provided along with it.
Canonical is committed to providing five years of support for the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS until April 2021. The operating system was released two years ago on April 21, 2016, and up to now, it has received three such maintenance updates. The update maintenance update for the Xenial Xerus family is Ubuntu 16.04.5, which may be available later this year.
On April 26, 2018, Canonical plans to release a new, long-supported Ubuntu version of Bionic Beaver, the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, that will receive similar maintenance updates with the latest security and software updates until April 2023. All Ubuntu 16.04 LTS users will be able to upgrade to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
