How to create a new empty file / template file in Ubuntu 16.10 Desktop?

You can go into your ~/Templates folder and create templates yourself, then they will appear in the right-click menu. For instance:

touch ~/Templates/Untitled.txt

If you need some templates you can get some from this download (found it on ubuntuforums:

wget http://stalefries.googlepages.com/Templatesv4.zip

Contents:

 $ tree
.
├── Fontforge Font.sfd
├── HyperText Markup Language.html
├── Images
│   ├── Scalable Vector Graphic.svg
│   └── Xara Xtreme Graphic.xar
├── Office
│   ├── Abiword Document.awt
│   ├── Microsoft Office
│   │   ├── Excel Spreadsheet.xlt
│   │   ├── Powerpoint Presentation.pot
│   │   └── Word Document.doc
│   └── OpenDocument
│       ├── OpenDocument Database.odb
│       ├── OpenDocument Document.ott
│       ├── OpenDocument Drawing.otg
│       ├── OpenDocument Formula.odf
│       ├── OpenDocument Presentation.otp
│       ├── OpenDocument Spreadsheet.ots
│       └── Templates
│           ├── Presentations
│           │   ├── Chalkboard.otp
│           │   ├── Compladients.otp
│           │   ├── OOo Professional.otp
│           │   └── Squares.otp
│           └── Trifold brochure.ott
├── Rich Text Format.rtf
├── Scripts
│   ├── Perl Script.pl
│   ├── Python Script.py
│   └── Shell Script.sh
└── Text File.txt

Image:

edit: for the directories to show up I needed to do a nautilus -q and open nautilus.

From Apache OpenOffice Templates. Several listed but picktemplates_111.otp is related to Ubuntu.

• Opens an apache openoffice template with an Ubuntu background:

  

... and another set from apache openoffice.