Canonical Extending Ubuntu 14.04/16.04 LTS Support To Ten Years

Canonical is announcing this morning they are extending the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS "Xenial Xerus" releases to a ten year lifespan.

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS were already on a ten year support plan while Canonical has decided retroactively to extend 14.04 LTS and 16.04 LTS to ten years too, as such they will now be supported until April 2024 and April 2026, respectively.

These older Ubuntu Long Term Support releases had been maintained for a period of five years under Canonical's extended security maintenance (ESM) offered to organizations while now they are providing ten years of support to paying customers. The only change today is around 14.04/16.04 LTS with 18.04/20.04 LTS sticking to their already committed ten year cycles.

In a press release set to hit the wire, Canonical attributes this LTS extension for the older releases to being around better economics on infrastructure upgrades by their clients and the growing need around cybersecurity. Canonical's Extended Security Maintenance period is focused on offering security updates and prominent fixes to clients, including live-patching of Linux kernel security vulnerabilities.