Support lifespan

Remarks#

New versions of Ubuntu are released by Canonical every 6 months. Every two years, the release is a Long Term Support version.

Support lifespan

• Normal release - supported for 9 months
• Long Term Support (LTS) release

   • LTS releases for Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Core, and Ubuntu Kylin are supported for 5 years.
• LTS releases for Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu MATE and Lubuntu are supported for 3 years.

What support means

• Updates for potential security problems and bugs (not new versions of software)
• Availability of commercial support contracts from Canonical
• Support by Landscape, Canonical’s enterprise oriented server management tool set.

Currently supported releases

The table shows a list of currently supported release showing both original distribution releases (e.g. Ubuntu 14.04) and point releases (e.g. 14.04.3). The Ubuntu versions which are still supported will be delivered security updates.

Point releases include support for new hardware as well as rolling up all the updates published in that series to date. So a fresh install of a point release will work on newer hardware and will also not require a big download of additional updates.