Worried when 10.04lts goes end of life

[A. Kromic]

On 27/11/11 09:53, Alex Cockell wrote:
>
> Hi all.
>
> I'm worried now. In order to sidestep Windows Vista, I have bought
> both my Thinkpad R61i and Ideapad S12 preinstalled with Ubuntu from
> Linux Emporium. i have therefore never installed Linux myself, only
> accepted updates and LTS upgrades as required. i now hear that the
> user environment has completely changed, and I risk having my machines
> bricked when 12.04.1 comes around...
>

Actually _nothing_ special will happen when 12.04LTS comes around.
10.04LTS desktop will still be supported for a year, but nothing special
will happen in 2013 either. There is no reason why you shouldn't use
your machine with that OS until the machine's EOL actually; that
routinely happens with WinXP, and it especially happened with Win98
after its EOL. This is a bit different though because of all the
included software, but you have to consider two facts there: 1) much of
the included software has become obsolete even _now_, there won't be any
new versions introduced, even while supported; 2) most of the
significant bugs will be fixed by then, so not much problems should
remain (except those bugs which have already been fixed for newer ubuntu
versions but never backported to the old LTS). If you need newer and
more secure software which connects to the Internet (like Mozilla
programs), you can always install them from the PPA-s, most easily from
the Ubuntu Tweak program.

Another thing, "server version" will be supported until 2015, and
because desktop and server share the same base system, those components
not directly connected to the desktop use will still be updated until
then. You can even use the OS until then, even though the desktop
software will be unsupported. And other than lack of updates, nothing
bad will happen, so even though it's not quite recommended you could
still happily use that system until 2020 for that matter. Also the OS
will work as good with your hardware as it does today.

Now, for the alternatives which you could install (perhaps even in that
period between 2013 and 2015, if you should still have the same
computer), you could try a newer Ubuntu, LTS or not (the next LTS
version would be easiest for you to upgrade to), perhaps in the Xubuntu
flavoras someone suggested, because of the classic, familiar interface
of Xfce desktop and because it's easier on the system resources which
might be significant for an older machine (you can easily do it by
installing "xubuntu-desktop" package, then chose "Xubuntu Sesion" on
login). Other alternative could be Mint like you mentioned, you can
freely download it and install, but that's much harder to do than
upgrading to a newer Ubuntu. If you know how to do it (backup data then
clean install), or you have someone else to do it for you, then it could
be an option...

For me personally, the option of choice I'd do would be the first one -
to upgrade to 12.04LTS in 2013 and use it as Xubuntu. I actually already
did something similar on my laptop, although not to LTS - I've been
using 10.04LTS Ubuntu for a year and a half, now I use  11.10 Xubuntu
(not normally possible as a direct upgrade though) :)

-- 
A.Kromic
-
No trees were harmed in the sending of this message;
however, a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

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