Why end-of-life LTS releases in April?

Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) jonathan at ubuntu.com
Wed Jan 20 20:29:41 GMT 2010


Hi John

On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 10:09 PM, john <lists.john at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was sort of idly wondering why does Ubuntu end-of-life their LTS
> releases in April? Whose interest does it serve?
> From my prospective (e.g. a school computer admin) it's a terrible
> time. It leaves me with unsupported software for 3 months of the
> school year.
> Assuming (perhaps erroneously) that many of the most avid users of LTS
> Desktop releases are educational institutions (after all individual
> users probably track the "latest and greatest" ubuntu), why not just
> push the EOL date back until July? Granted that may not work for parts
> of the world where school happens in July, but it would at least work
> for approx .5 of the worlds edubuntu user base. Or perhaps it should
> EOL on a schedule that works for the other .5. I am not really arguing
> for one or the other (if indeed this is really a concern, I see that
> Australian schools seem to have a holiday from July 5 to July 21). I
> am merely suggesting that the current schedule doesn't work very well
> for ANY educational institution.
>
> As I understand it Hardy will EOL in April 2011, so if a change were
> to be implemented, there would be some time to adjust. Note I am only
> talking about Desktop LTS  EOL cycle's. It wouldn't even require
> (much) more developer energy since most fixes likely to come in the
> additional three months of support would probably be mirrored in the
> Server LTS support which runs an additional 2 years (e.g. Hardy Server
> LTS EOL is April 2013). Perhaps that's already how it works and I am
> just full of beans (I don't think this is the case since Edu 7.04 LTS
> didn't get updates after April 2008).
>
> I'd be interested in someone setting me straight if I am way of base here.

I don't think it's that big a deal.

* Each LTS release is supported on the desktop for 3 years
* There is a new LTS release every 2 years

That means that when a new LTS release is made, you have an entire
year available to upgrade to the next version.

If someone can't set one day aside for upgrades and possibly some
troubleshooting for an upgrade in a year every 2 years, then they are
seriously in need of an assistant :)

-Jonathan



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