Canonical starts charging for Ubuntu LTS security updates
Canonical starts charging for Ubuntu LTS security updates
So Ubuntu has this model where they pretty much freeze package versions for an Ubuntu release after release, and then they only backport security updates from upstream. There's nothing new here, most distros do it this way. The idea is that this way they can polish the gazillions of package versions
afaik. You still get free updates. But with pro you get 5 more years of updates on lts. making it a total of 10 years.
Which seems completely fair. This is a silly article and too many comments here arenāt understanding this.
If a business wants 10 years of support then yeah they should pay as itās cheaper than upgrading.
For personal use just goddamn update after 5 years geeze lol.
Edit: this personās blog post just misunderstands the situation. See here for actual release info and when ESM starts for each release. 5 years standard as of 24.04.
And you can get the extra 5 years for free anyway with a free subscription for up to 5 machines.
Is this news? The article is from Apr 2023
It is not. The headline is completely inaccurate.
Nothing has changed for LTS at all. Scroll down to the pretty graphs on https://ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle, and pay particular attention to how the ratio of orange to purple on the LTS graphs has changed over time. (it hasn't) The base LTS support window has always been 5 years, and the extended window has always been another 5 years.
What they did add was additional security updates for Universe packages, which are represented by the black line. Note that this black line is independent of the LTS coverage. From https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-pro-faq/34042:
Your Ubuntu LTS is still secured in exactly the same way it has always been, with five years of free security updates for the āmainā packages in the distribution, and best-effort security coverage for everything else. This has been the promise of Ubuntu since our first LTS in 2006, and remains exactly the same. In fact, thanks to our expanded security team, your LTS is better secured today than ever before, even without Ubuntu Pro.
Ubuntu Pro is an additional stream of security updates and packages that meet compliance requirements such as FIPS or HIPAA, on top of an Ubuntu LTS. Ubuntu Pro was launched in public beta on 5 October, 2022, and moved to general availability on 26 January, 2023. Ubuntu Pro provides an SLA for security fixes for the entire distribution (āmain and universeā packages) for ten years, with extensions for industrial use cases.
You can also dig into this AskUbuntu answer for even more details, but the long and short of it is this has no impact on Ubuntu LTS whatsoever. Keep using it if that is your thing. Keep using something else if it is not.
Edit: This old news will become newsworthy if Canonical starts shifting packages out of the main repo and into universe, which would in fact reduce the security update coverage of LTS releases. That said, the article has not asserted any evidence of this. Nothing to see here...for now.
I only received the prompt to subscribe today.
Not surprising, they want some of that RHEL money. When you choose a Corporate distribution, enshittification is usually what you get...
You'll get 5 free instances if you get a subscription, but that kind of messes with the whole "just install Ubuntu from a USB key and use it with no hassle" workflow many Ubuntu users used to love.
It only matters if you want support after 5 years. Just upgrade to a new release if you donāt need 10 years. If thatās a hassle, get the free subscription for 5 machines and you get 10 years.
Seems reasonable!
I subscribed to pro with a throwaway email so I'm okay with it generally speaking.
But 5 instances is not enough, not even for home personal use. If you're running VMs for other tasks, you quickly hit this limit.
- Ubuntu desktop
- kubuntu VM for yarr
- xubuntu VM for testing questionable programs
- Ubuntu on raspberry pi
- Ubuntu in AWS
I donate to Ubuntu annually but I'm at the point of foregoing that donation if I need to subscribe to their subscription model.
I just realized that I'm getting advertisement for Ubuntu Pro where it said it will give me more security patches when I use apt update. I'm using PopOs. Which really irritated me.
Report that to PopOs. I doubt they would want this ad to appear to their users. They will probably remove it.
That's bullshit, it's still free for the normal lts support. Only if you want support after that you'll have to pay, or upgrade to the next version for free.
Any sysadmins here to suggest an alternative server distro? We've been installing Ubuntu in most of our VMs at our company, and while I realize it's a hassle to switch them all, I kinda want to at least have a discussion about it.
Since you(r team) already have the Ubuntu experience, the obvious and senseful migration path is Debian. Stable plus docker/podman covers for most of what's needed plus cover for the "bUt thIS paCKaGe iS 2 weEkS olD!!!!!1" crew.
Fedora is the only other "server distro" that I know of but obviously you can install any distro and just omit the desktop environment from the install.
Learning nix might be worth it on a server.
Debian
I use Debian for my own server for over 3 years now and it's been great so far.
Horrendous how canonical engineers with bills to pay might want to monetise their labour!
More seriously, open source should not be confused with free labour. Do you think Linus works on the kernel for free? He does not, nor should he. We are all lucky to benefit from 5 years free updates from Ubuntu. You need longer, because your use case is so mission critical? then pay for the engineerās time.
Edit: grammar