The latest version of Canonical's Linux distribution features a streamlined OpenStack installer, along with the LXD hypervisor and telco-strength networking Credit: Pierre Cante If there’s one Linux distribution that has worked hard — overtime, even — to associate itself with OpenStack and all it represents, it’s Canonical’s Ubuntu. And if there’s one message Ubuntu has been working hard to promote, it’s the company’s dedication to the painless deployment and maintenance of OpenStack — as is the case with Ubuntu’s 15.10 release, aka Wily Werewolf. With 15.10, Canonical delivers the latest edition of OpenStack, Liberty, and the first generally available edition of a new deployment and management tool, OpenStack Autopilot. Using Canonical’s own Juju orchestration system and Landscape systems management tool, Autopilot distills the installation process to a few crucial admin choices. Technologies that are redundant or not meant to be deployed together are flagged during setup. Canonical has also been using Ubuntu to draw attention to LXD, the company’s hypervisor and container runtime hybrid, which supports functions like live migration. Canonical appears to want to make LXD the default compute resource unit for OpenStack on Ubuntu over the long term; the company recently unveiled an OpenStack Nova compute driver for LXD as a tech preview. Telcos remain one of OpenStack’s bigger user bases, so the mix of features within both OpenStack and its implementations, Ubuntu included, drift in that direction. Among them is a new set of high-performance networking tools, the Data Plate Development Kit (DPDK), to allow “virtual network functions to deliver the high-performance network throughput required in core network services” (according to Canonical). Software DevelopmentCloud ComputingOpen Source