Canonical extends Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and 16.04 LTS lifespans

Canonical, the creator of the Ubuntu operating system, has announced that Ubuntu 14.04 LTS ‘Trusty Tahr’ and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS ‘Xenial Xerus’ have had their lifespan extended and will now get ten years of life each. With the new extensions in place, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS will be supported until April 2024 (instead of April 2022) and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS will be supported until April 2026 (instead of April 2024). This puts them in line with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS which already have ten years of support.

According to Canonical, the extension will give organisations time to balance their infrastructure upgrade costs by giving them more time to enact their upgrade plans. The news will act as a bit of a reprieve for companies that have been hit by the coronavirus over the year and a half.

Commenting on the change to the schedule, 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 organisations manage their infrastructure on their terms.”

Typically, Ubuntu releases get five years of support – this is the case for people using the operating system on a personal basis. An additional five years of support can be purchased through Ubuntu Advantage bringing the total lifespan to ten years. If you’d like to see more information on Ubuntu Advantage and Extended Security Maintenance, check out the Ubuntu pages on the topic.