Mark Shuttleworth has announced that Ubuntu 18.04 will be supported for ten years. Long Term Support releases of Ubuntu usually enjoy just five years of support, so this doubling is highly significant.
Those letters stand for Long Term Support, and up until recently that meant Canonical would offer five years of official support. But now Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth says the company will support Ubuntu 18.04 for twice as long.
Ubuntu Desktop version 18.04 and Ubuntu Server version 18.04 from Canonical are supported through April of 2023 officially, as far as maintenance updates are concerned**. 18.04.1 and 18.04.2 are maintenance updates for 18.04.
How long will Ubuntu be supported for?
The long-term support (LTS) releases of Ubuntu used to get support for five years. This is changing now. Ubuntu 18.04 will now be supported for ten years. Other LTS releases might also get an extended support.
But while Ubuntu itself receives this long-time support (LTS) of five years, the rest of the Ubuntu flavors only receive three years of support, which ended in May 2021. The last maintenance update for the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) series was Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS, released in August 2020.
Will Ubuntu 18 04 be supported until 2028?
Ubuntu 18.04 was released in April of this year, and the new announcement means that it will be supported until 2028. It is a significant and important change for developers working in various fields including hardware, Io. T and the cloud, but it is not known whether a similar support cycle will be adopted for future LTS releases.
It means you’ll be able to install Ubuntu 18.04 today and continue receiving security updates and bug fixes through early 2028 even if you never upgrade to a newer version Ubuntu. It’s unclear at this point if Canonical will commit to a 10-year life-cycle for future Ubuntu LTS releases.
Dubbed Bionic Beaver, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS was released in April 2018 and it is supported by Canonical with software and security updates for at least five years. But while Ubuntu itself receives this long-time support (LTS) of five years, the rest of the Ubuntu flavors only receive three years of support, which ended in May 2021.
How often does Ubuntu get security updates?
Ubuntu is published by Canonical on all major public clouds, and the latest image for each LTS version will always include security updates rolled up to at most two weeks ago.