from the that's-a-long-time-to-have-systemd-around dept.
https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=showheadline&story=20094
Canonical has announced the company will extend support on long-term support (LTS) versions of Ubuntu to supply security updates for 15 years.
"Today, Canonical announced the expansion of the Legacy add-on for Ubuntu Pro, extending total coverage for Ubuntu LTS releases to 15 years. Starting with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr), this extension brings the full benefits of Ubuntu Pro – including continuous security patching, compliance tooling and support for your OS – to long-lived production systems."
The extended support is provided as part of Canonical's Ubuntu Pro service.
Editor's Comment: Ubuntu Pro is free for personal use on up to 5 computers. There is also a pricing system for professional and enterprise use.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday November 19, @12:52PM (1 child)
Wanna have some fun?
Open a tab and do some searches for Ubuntu Pro users. "Ubuntu Pro Experiences" etc.
Its not the ratio of good vs bad reviews, its that there's no grassroots commentary at all.
In the networking world there's megatons of social discussion about "that time I called Cisco TAC about xyz and they said ABC".
I can find is people commenting (OK... complaining) about the marketing.
You will find people complaining about apt reporting tons of unpatched security flaws when you upgrade and how awful that they're holding the internet hostage.
The other thing I find a lot of is complaining about it being a big corporate tax. If you work at big corporate and don't pay for security as a service then automated security scanner software will trigger even if there are no relevant upgrades simply for not paying. So pay for ... quite possibly nothing ... or fail the (for profit) audit. The entire process is organized around extracting money not providing value so they kind of deserve it LOL.
Or you'll find people generically mad at Ubuntu or a piece of software they packaged in a way they don't like "waaah the distro's default background pic for window manager xyz is ugly waah" derailing an attempt at discussing Ubuntu Pro.
One final ask: Wheres the user reviews? Do they have some crazy NDA that if you pay for support its illegal to talk about your experiences in public or they discount the price if you agree to keep silent? Possibly... are there any users at all? Good luck finding sales figures.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 19, @12:58PM
For Ubuntu Pro, I mean. I can find total revenue has gone up $100M, roughly doubling, since 2018 however thats a total. How much have they inflated prices, or from other sources, unclear. Its possible for total corporate revenue to go up even if sales for one specific product are zero although its surely not THAT bad.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 19, @02:20PM (3 children)
Install Ubuntu. Install programs. It works, unless you install something that mangles the apt packages and then you need to reinstall.
All is good. You can add repos, do apt update, install programs.
All is good until you update. Then you are screwed screwed screwed.
After updating you can't install programs. The apt system becomes a maze of links and libraries and conditions. This program wants this, that program wants that and it is stuffed. The only option is to use the system until you absolutely have to install something, and then format the drive and start again.
In some ways it is worse than Windows. With Windows you had to install from fresh every six to 12 months. Ubuntu is now the same.
The upgrades cack the package system, the system update cacks it. There is no win here. Only a fresh new copy booted from USB.
Even then you are throwing the dice. Video driver mismatch, broken network drivers in the kernel, mismatching packages. Even if you find a version that works it will be soon out of date and may not even be able to be installed three months later.
Yes, it can work.
I have two machines running Ubuntu right now. One is more than five years old and on its last legs. It has been stable for a long time.
The other gets a disk wipe and new OS install every 2 to 3 months.
Does it really matter if the support is there if the OS is this flaky for packaging and applying updates?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by janrinok on Wednesday November 19, @03:29PM (2 children)
I cannot argue with what you saying - I do not know what you wanted to install nor why you had such problems. That has been your experience and I understand why you might hold the views that you do
On the other hand, I cannot say it has been my experience. I am not an Ubuntu Pro user and I agree that it can be frustrating seeing that there are fixes which I cannot yet have for some reason or other. But I have numerous systems here, approximately half of which are Ubuntu based. They usually just keep working. It is rare that there is a package that I need that is not in the official repo, but even then it is unusual if there is not an additional repo that I can add to get whatever package I need. My servers, my desktops and my raspi's just keep ticking along.
Of course, there is an occasional problem, usually resulting from a power interruption that causes corrupted data or damages some item of hardware (most recent was a PSU which burnt out one voltage but of course it still couldn't power up a computer any more). I could I suppose invest in an UPS but with 18 systems on the go at various times which would I put on the UPS and which would I leave to fate? Sod's law says that my decision would be wrong. But I cannot hand on heart blame Ubuntu for any of that.
We all have our favourite distro and we can all be keen to explain why. Ubuntu has systemd but, to be honest, it just does what it says on the tin. It doesn't cause me any issues at all. I could have done without all of the politics and business machinations that went on while it was being introduced but I don't even think about it nowadays. I am free to do what I wish with my computers and the software that I choose to run. I have not encountered any restrictions. I also use Debian and Devuan on a handful of systems.
My own point of view is that it is miles better than any version of windows that I have experienced since I left Windows 2000 behind many many years ago. Long term support will be welcomed here, but I will still update more frequently than that.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 20, @01:30AM
Firefox, Virtualbox, Wine, Openoffice, gimp, apache2
It has gotten to the point where it is just easier to use snap/flatpak where possible.
The system can shoot itself in the foot. Last time, I installed the latest Ubuntu, and it was fine. Programs installed - I have a build sheet now with everything to do for bringing Ubuntu online from a USB, and it worked. All good. Then the background auto update updated the video drivers which just broke it. Booting with the old kernel didn't work. It booted but had issues. Cacked. For over a month I tried to fix it. Eventually a new version fixed the video driver problem, and introduced other issues. I worked out that the background system auto update that they don't tell you about needs to be disabled.
It still crashes if a large file is copied using the UI. Known old bug with dirty paging perhaps. Just another fun problem to deal with, especially when you need TB of data from old drives copied in.
Yeah, Ubuntu has been my main OS for years, it's mostly been good, but recently it's just been one issue after another. Compounded with hardware issues, I've spent the last year fixing the computer and trying to get it stable and working rather than actually using it. Right now, it is turned off, waiting for the newest Ubuntu to be installed... again. Long story.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 23, @09:07AM
Not the AC but for me basically the Ubuntu Server experience is fine. Ubuntu Desktop is NOT fine (making an ssh connection to an Ubuntu Desktop machine causes all sorts of GUI related crap to launch and run, pipewire, etc; and that's by design WONTFIX etc etc). Heck Desktop Linux is not fine, I think it's broken by design so that Win32 is the most/only stable ABI on Linux[1] 🤣. It's just that Microsoft is making Windows so bad (imagine agentic AI in Windows 11 installing malware, sending more telemetry etc) that Desktop Linux is starting to look like the lesser evil.
[1] https://blog.hiler.eu/win32-the-only-stable-abi/ [hiler.eu]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by shrewdsheep on Wednesday November 19, @05:22PM (2 children)
15 years is way beyond the typical lifespan of either hardware or software (well except the cobol stuff). Also 15 years might be well beyond the existence of Canonical. It does not seem to be money well spend for either Canonical or its clients. I wonder what has ridden them.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 19, @07:56PM
Software, maybe, but computer hardware easily lasts much longer than this. Pretty much all of the computer equipment I have from the 1990s and 2000s still works today, with a few items having needed minor repairs over the years like replacing the occasional failed drive belt or capacitor.
The exception might be power supplies and hard drives, I've replaced a lot of those, which for PCs is actually super easy because the stuff made today is backward compatible with basically everything from the past 30+ years.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 23, @09:30AM
15 years isn't a very long time for some organizations and projects, and that's why some still stick to that COBOL stuff[1]. For some organizations having your OS being as boring and reliable as a good building foundation is a desirable feature not a bug.
Building zillions of lines of code of your organization's software on a "foundation"/framework that breaks every 18 months would be insane. 15 years is probably barely tolerable if you intend to write/have lots of software on the OS. Of course it doesn't matter as much what foundation you have if your software requirements are the equivalent of a tent/shack. You can just rebuild a new one every few months if not days.
Imagine if you had to port humans from using DNA to something different every 15 years just because DNA is old stuff and no longer supported.
If human civilization ever needs to build increasingly complex stuff it will need stabler and stabler foundations, otherwise the parasitic costs of moving from one foundation to another will eventually become too large a burden.
[1] It tends to be very expensive, but for some organizations using the 18 month hipster crap will be even more expensive. Given the sad state of things, to paraphrase a Japanese saying - those who use mainframes are stupid, but those who don't use mainframes are also stupid.
https://www.longpelaexpertise.com.au/ezine/IBMBackwardCompatibility.php [longpelaexpertise.com.au]