[lubuntu-users] Asking how long Lubuntu 18.04 supported as Ubuntu 18.04 is supported untill 2028

[Chris Guiver]

On 4/5/21, Aere Greenway <aere at dvorak-keyboards.com> wrote:
> I think a more pertinent question here, relates to Lubuntu being the
> only 'flavor' of Ubuntu that supports 32-bit (i386) machines.
>
> Will the Ubuntu repository continue to included kernel fixes relating to
> 32-bit (i386) machines, or will all 32-bit support end when Lubuntu
> 18.04 support ends?
>
Lubuntu 18.04 LTS wasn't the only 32-bit x86 (i386) Ubuntu, in fact a
number of flavors provided i386 ISOs and provided support.  It was
only Lubuntu and Xubuntu that continued support past 18.04, providing
a 18.10 x86/i386 release, and continued with alpha dailies into
December of 2018 of the disco cycles (ie. disco [19.04] alpha ISOs in
i386).

Even though no 19.04 ISOs were ever released beyond those alpha
dailies of Lubuntu & Xubuntu disco (19.04), any installs of them ended
up with supported/packages the entire life of the product, despite it
not being a Lubuntu release and the Lubuntu team not providing support
(it was just the infrastructure kept building i386 packages as amd64
fixes were built).  The i386 build was turned off completely in the
beta stage of eoan.

I very much believe i386 packages found in main are still being built
for 18.04 for the five years (ie. until 2023-April), in fact the same
is probably true for all repositories, however 'universe' doesn't
usually get updates beyond the 3rd year as it's used by flavors who
are all EOL at that time.

Whilst I'm confident with the standard support of the 18.04 product
(or 2023-April), I'm not sure if ESM will be provided for i386 and the
build infrastructure maybe turned off then to save costs.  But I can
only give my opinion.

(Note: I write as a user of a number of i386 devices)