Laugh at or complain about Ubuntu all you wish… but this type of effort really puts Linux as a compelling competitor to Windows for enterprise desktop users. Rather than paying for the Windows software license and then Microsoft or 3rd party support for the OS on top, the fees would be for dedicated operating system and package support against criticial vulnerabilities. Wouldn’t a business rather have something that “just works as it is” over the long term, rather than something that leaves sysadmins holding their breath every Patch Tuesday with Microsoft randomly shoehorning in “features” here and there that have to be shutoff in GP editor?
More people using Ubuntu means more will be comfortable switching away from mac/Windows. Plus the free software components benefit from having a dedicated team securely supporting the packages over the long term.
The longstanding issue that remains is all the industry-specialized software either crappily-coded or riddled with DRMs and whatnot don’t support Linux well yet.
This is valid for end users too. Ubuntu Pro is free for up to 5 machines. People can install 22.04 and stay on it for 10 years or 24.04 for 12 years. That’s the kind of boring stable desktop operation that only Windows XP has managed to muster and people loved it. It’s perfect for the kind of folks who hate having to do major OS upgrades, as well as people who support others for free. Cough … family IT … cough. You bet your ass the family members I support would stay on 22.04 for a looong time!
Absolutely. Perfect for the people that get spooked at one pixel not being where they were used to it being. (It could be me 😳)
Windows has much better forward and backward compatibility than Linux, that’s why 10 year old Windows is still fine. 10 year old Linux on the other side just means nothing modern will work on it. That’s really only usable in extreme edge cases. Flatpak and Snap somewhat address this, but that also puts you back into the forced-upgrade treadmill, as Flatpak runtimes don’t have LTS support (not sure how Snap handles this).
I wonder how angry will the maintainers be in 2036:
aaaa, why do we have to support this ancient release, why did we promise 12 years of support
That’s how you get successful, do something others don’t
Not a problem. Ship the component as a snap instead. 😊
“Oh no, we’re getting paid to do this thing instead of some other thing.”
Part of having a job is working on things that need to be worked on, not because they’re fun.
That still causes internal screaming and when you reach the point where you feel you don’t learn anything new because you only babysit some legacy shit you leave.
So next LTS might have to be resilient to the 2038 bug (32 bit signed timestamps overflow). I wonder how many softwares are vulnerable 🤔
Wouldnt 12 years update add up to 2036 and not 2038?
Laughs in Solaris 10
… for 27 years.
Holy shit I had no idea it was still in support lol, that’s wild
Solaris 11 came out in 2012 and is supported until 2035!!
What do you use it for?
With Ubuntu Pro. I’ll stick with Alma, thanks.
That’s awesome! I wish more OS-es follow, especially Debian. Having support for an OS that can cover the whole perceived lifecycle of the hardware is something that was once (in the 2000s) the standard. This is something crucial for businesses, but it’s also great for home users.
Melts in long term support





