Ubuntu developers are already preparing for the launch of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, even if they didn't even get the 15.10 branch out the door. One of the ways they are doing this is by triaging the bugs that have been gathering dust.

Ubuntu has a lot of users and that is a good thing for Canonical, but it also means that there are a lot of bug reports. Contrary to popular belief, Canonical is not a huge company, and it doesn't have a lot of people working to triage the bugs. It would be too much for just a few guys.

There are relying heavily on other developers and community, but even that's not enough. In the past few years, the bug tracker from Launchpad has been gathering bugs, and many of they haven't even been read. It's unlikely that huge problems are lying buried since a big issue would be noticed quickly from multiple reports, but it doesn't mean that there aren't valid bugs still left to correct.

Ubuntu Bug Bonanza

It's a well-known fact that most Ubuntu users prefer to get the LTS version and stick with it. They are doing that because it's extremely stable, and it's extremely stable because it usually has very few bugs.

"16.04 LTS will be running Unity 7 by default as it has done for the last six years, and our focus for the Unity 7 stack is fixing bugs that adversely affect the user experience of the desktop. Over the years, the bug lists for Unity 7 and Compiz have grown to become unmanageable.  To make sure we are focusing on the most important issues we have to do some serious tidying up of the bug lists and we need some help," wrote Will Cooke, the desktop lead at Canonical.

This means that developers will have to go trough what the reports and try to sort them, close them, and eventually get it to a manageable size. This is a big undertaking and we'll know more about how it's going at the upcoming Ubuntu Developer Summit.