Canonical, the name behind the popular Linux distro Ubuntu, announced the lifecycle extension of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and 16.04 LTS. Canonical also stated that these extensions allow organizations to balance the infrastructure upgrade costs, by providing them additional time to implement their upgrade plan. The prolonged Extended Security Maintenance phase of these releases enables a secure and low-maintenance infrastructure with security updates and kernel live patches.
Ten years
With the extensions, the end of life for Ubuntu 14.04 which was released in April 2014, will be April 2024 and the end of life for Ubuntu 16.04 which was released in April 2016, will be April 2026. End of life dates of Ubuntu 18.04 and Ubuntu 20.04 are remaining unchanged for now. The extended lifecycles are an opportunity for the organizations currently implementing their transition to new applications and technologies.
Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos, Product Manager at Canonical said,
“With the prolonged lifecycle of Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04 LTS, we’re entering a new page in our commitment to enabling enterprise environments. Each industry sector has its own deployment lifecycle and adopts technology at a different pace. We are bringing an operating system lifecycle that lets organizations manage their infrastructure on their terms.”