Comment by captn3m0 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by captn3m0 | Hacker News Reader

The older Ubuntu Advantage (now Ubuntu Pro infra-only) covered the main repository only. The universe repository was not covered in Ubuntu Advantage, but was covered in the new Ubuntu Pro subscription, which was in beta so far. Ubuntu Pro entered GA on 26th Jan[1], so now these apps (in universe repo) are only supported if you enable esm-apps, under a valid Ubuntu Pro. Prior to October, these apps wouldn't have been considered supported (as confirmed by running ubuntu-security-status)

You can get Ubuntu Pro for 5 personal machines for free. The change is overall a positive, since universe is now a supported repository in ESM.

Here's the relevant snippet from https://endoflife.date/ubuntu (Disclaimer: I maintain this page, feedback welcome):

> Ubuntu Pro offers security fixes for critical, high, and selected medium CVEs in the main and universe repositories. Ubuntu Pro (Infra-only) - previously known as Ubuntu Advantage - only guarantees security fixes for packages in the main repository - other packages are on a best-effort basis.

Note that Pro only covers this for limited architectures[2], so keep that in mind.

[1]: https://www.infoworld.com/article/3686569/canonical-security...

[2]: https://askubuntu.com/a/1452498

There seems to be a lot of confusion about the length of support for 22.04 LTS. In the past it's always been safe to assume LTS is 5 years. But I've seen conflicting info about 22.04. For example:

https://kubuntu.org/getkubuntu/ "Kubuntu 22.04 supported with security and maintenance updates, until April 2025".

https://endoflife.date/ubuntu "Hardware and Maintenance Updates" "Ends in 1 year and 8 months (30 Sep 2024)" But the graphic you have right above that shows 22.04 "Hardware and maintenance updates" going into 2027.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases "End of Standard Support" "April 2027" At least the wiki still has the expected date, but it's hard to find anything specific on the main ubuntu.com site.

Anyone know what's going on with these dates?

It's 2027 for Ubuntu, but other variants only get 3 years of support[0]:

> Maintenance updates will be provided for 5 years until April 2027 386 for Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Cloud, and Ubuntu Core. All the remaining flavours will be supported for 3 years. Additional security support is available with ESM (Extended Security Maintenance).

The graphic (from the official website)[1] is slightly misleading because it doesn't differentiate between "Hardware & Maintenance Updates" and "Maintenance Updates". The source for these [2] marks these as 2 separate dates. The undocumented policy seems to be "hardware+Maintenance updates for 2 years", and "maintenance updates for another 3". Ubuntu doesn't seem to document what's the difference between these.

I'd reported this to Ubuntu a few years ago[3], but it wasn't deemed confusing. It's not helpful that Ubuntu website changed the definition of EOL from "end-of-unpaid-LTS-support to end of ESM. in the wiki[4] to make it appear like older releases are still supported.

[0]: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/jammy-jellyfish-release-notes...

[1]: https://ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle

[2]: https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu.com/blob/main/static/js/...

[3]: https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu.com/issues/8725

[4]: https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu.com/issues/8725#issuecom...

Thanks for trying to help clear that up a little. Of course they are wrong about it not being confusing.

Any guesses what changes between the first 2 years and the next 3? What are these "Hardware Updates" they seem to stop doing?

Regarding the different flavors, as far as I know they fetch updates from the main Ubuntu repos, so any Ubuntu updates should be available to them. What does it mean to say they are only supported for 3 years?

I don't think "best-effort basis" is true, now that Canonical is doing the work of patching all the vulnerabilities in them, and is just not releasing the patches outside of Pro.

Will do a follow-up to see if anything outside of main/restricted in a ESM release is still getting security updates or now, now that Pro is released.

Edit: Filed https://github.com/endoflife-date/endoflife.date/issues/2414

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