Canonical To Stick With 10 Year Support Cycle For Ubuntu LTS Releases

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Canonical To Stick With 10 Year Support Cycle For Ubuntu LTS Releases

Given recent talk of upstream Linux Long-Term Support (LTS) kernels likely being reduced from six to two year support windows moving forward, Canonical today decided to re-affirm their support for ten years of support with Ubuntu Long Term Support versions...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-LTS-Sticks-With-10-Years

[phoron]

FWIW, I've also heard of some project under Linux Foundation aiming to give SLTS support for 10 years for linux and Debian 11. It was called CIP, for Civil infrasctructure Platform, but I don't know much about it. They must have to limit scope somehow, but they seem to have some intention to keep things running for a decade, maybe for some restricted packages or archs or something. I forget where I learned that from, sorry, I'd like to give credit to the source.

[cynic]

from what I read from their blog, they only mention security fixes.
Is this correct?

[kylew77]

from what I read from their blog, they only mention security fixes.
Is this correct?

Seems likely. Red Hat with RHEL still supports RHEL 7 for now but it is just bug fixes and security vulnerabilities, not product enhancements. Someone once told me the exact number of years Red Hat devotes to product enhancement and how many are just for security but I can't recall but I think it is close to half of the time the product is supported.

Edit: here is the link to how long Red Hat supports theirs: https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata
Looks like 5.5 years then just maintenance fixes.

[royce]

Idiotic canonical hate bots struggling to criticise canonical here below this line


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[You-]

from what I read from their blog, they only mention security fixes.
Is this correct?

What else do you expect?

Red Hat do go the frankenmonster approach, but the normal idea is that when you want later kernel features, you update the kernel to a later version.

[cynic]

What else do you expect?

I was just asking.
Why do you think I was expecting something in particular?

Red Hat do go the frankenmonster approach, but the normal idea is that when you want later kernel features, you update the kernel to a later version.

RH does an incredible work backporting new hardware support and new features.
Indeed, in the past Canonical tried to scrunge (also) this work to embed long term rh maintained kernel in Ubuntu.

[You-]

Why do you think I was expecting something in particular?

Nothing snarky from my end (even though thats what the phrase is normally used for). I am unsure what people expect from LTS style kernels. I would expect them to mostly only get security fixes and may be major bugs if relatively easy to backport.

Red Hat goes above and beyond that. I wasnt aware Canoncal had tried it in the past too, their newer approach with additional features and drivers in a more modern HWE kernel (aka a later release) seems a simpler method to do this.

[stormcrow]

Nothing snarky from my end (even though thats what the phrase is normally used for). I am unsure what people expect from LTS style kernels. I would expect them to mostly only get security fixes and may be major bugs if relatively easy to backport.

Red Hat goes above and beyond that. I wasnt aware Canoncal had tried it in the past too, their newer approach with additional features and drivers in a more modern HWE kernel (aka a later release) seems a simpler method to do this.

Differences in philosophies. RH deals with more risk adverse organizations so they don't risk API breakages even in the kernel itself if it can be avoided. There's a hell of a lot of custom code out there, and it can be affected by kernel API changes. Systems that can't just be updated at the whim of Linux kernel developers because of regulatory issues and other impediments. It's not just Nvidia that's complaining about APIs breaking in the Linux kernel. Canonical is willing to accept that kernel APIs may break when they change HWE software versions, but still give end users the opportunity not to update to something that may potentially break hardware compatibility for out-of-kernel drivers - yes, even if they have the code to port. That takes money, time, and potentially major pain if it's a regulatory Thing.

[indolering]

It's not just Nvidia that's complaining about APIs breaking in the Linux kernel

Who isn't complaining about this? God-forbid Linux change the development workflow or make architectural changes that could help address this situation.

But at least it gives SeL4 an opening....