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How on-demand Android environments lay the foundation for Android engineering Software engineering has evolved dramatically over the last decade. Development environments that once depended on dedicated hardware have become resources that can be provisioned, configured, and removed on demand. Infrastructure is now expected to be reproducible, automated, and integrated into continuous development workflows. However, Android has largely remained an exception.

A decade ago, Canonical launched Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (codenamed “Xenial Xerus”). As a Long-Term Support (LTS) release, it comes with 5 years of standard security coverage, which is doubled to a total of 10 years through Expanded Security Maintenance (ESM) for users with an Ubuntu Pro subscription. As of April 30, 2026, the 10-year ESM coverage for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, under Ubuntu Pro, has officially reached its end of support.

For Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), delivering containerized applications to enterprise clients often means navigating a difficult trade-off between minimal image size and accurate security visibility. Traditional approaches can leave development teams battling severe CVE noise or, conversely, missing critical vulnerabilities entirely due to scanner blind spots.

You can now upgrade Ubuntu Server Virtual Machine Scale Sets on Azure to Ubuntu Pro without rebuilding the set. Your instances keep serving traffic. The change is a license update, not a new image. Users could already perform in-place upgrades to Ubuntu Pro for individual VMs. Now, we’re extending the feature to scale sets – groups of load balanced virtual machines that you can manage as a single unit.

When the codename for Ubuntu 26.10 was announced, I suspect there was a measurable surge in users searching for the definition of “stonking” across search engines and the various popular AI chatbots.