| ▲ | Ubuntu LTS releases to 15 years with Legacy add-on(canonical.com) |
| 107 points by taubek 3 days ago | 44 comments |
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| ▲ | jwr a minute ago | parent | next [-] |
| LTS releases are great. I only use LTS releases on my servers. Problem is, if you need PCI compliance (credit card industry requirements, largely making no sense), some credit card processors will tell you to work with companies like SecureMetrics, who "audit" systems. SecureMetrics will scan your system, find an "old" ssh version and flag you for non-compliance, even though your ssh was actually patched through LTS maintenance. You will then need to address all the vulnerabilities they think you have and provide "proof" that you are running a patched version (I've been asked for screenshots…). |
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| ▲ | cookiengineer 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is a good thing, despite my own concerns. The major argument you get from "why are you using Windows 7" is exactly this, companies in infrastructure argue that they still get a supported operating system in return (despite the facts, despite EOL, despite reality of MS not patching actually, and just disclosing new vulnerabilities). And currently there's a huge migration problem because Microsoft Windows 11 is a non-deterministic operating system, and you can't risk a core meltdown because of a popup ad in explorer.exe. I have no idea why Microsoft is sleeping at the wheel so much, literally every big industry customer I've been at in Europe tells me the exact same thing, and almost all of them were Windows customers, and are now migrating to Debian because of those reasons. (I'm proponent of Linux, but if I were a proponent of Windows I'd ask myself wtf Microsoft is doing for the last 10 years since Windows 7) |
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| ▲ | nebula8804 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The person having to maintain this must be in a world of hurt. Unless they found someone who really likes doing this kind of thing? Still, maintaining such an old codebase while the rest of the world moves on...ugh... |
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| ▲ | jacquesm 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Maybe I'm the odd one out but I love doing stuff that has long term stability written all over it. In fact the IT world moving as fast as it does is one of my major frustrations. Professionally I have to keep up so I'm reading myself absolutely silly but it is getting to the point where I expect that one of these days I'll end up being surprised because a now 'well known technique' was completely unknown to me. | |
| ▲ | asteroidburger 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You're not adding new features and such like that. Just patching security vulnerabilities in a forked branch. Sure, you won't get the niceties of modern developments, but at least you have access to all of the source code and a working development environment. | | |
| ▲ | worthless-trash 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | As someone who actively maintains old rhel, the development environment is something you can drag forward. The biggest problem is fixing security flaws with patches that dont have 'simple' fixes. I imagine that they are going to have problems with accurately determining vulnerability in older code bases where code is similar, but not the same. | | |
| ▲ | littlestymaar 18 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > I imagine that they are going to have problems with accurately determining vulnerability in older code bases where code is similar, but not the same. That sounds like a fun job actually. |
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| ▲ | pram 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | On the other hand: dealing with 14.04 is practically cutting edge compared to stuff still using AIX and HPUX, which were outdated even 20 years ago lol | | |
| ▲ | wkat4242 44 minutes ago | parent [-] | | It's because they stopped development in the late 90s. Before Windows 95 (Chicago) came out, HP-UX with VUE was really cutting edge. IBM kinda screwed it up when they created CDE out of it though. And besides the GUI, all unixes were way more cutting edge than anything windows except NT. Only when that went mainstream with XP it became serious. I know your 20 year timeframe is after XP's release, but I just wanted to point out there was a time when the unixes were way ahead. You could even get common software like WP, Lotus 123 and even internet explorer and the consumer outlook (i forget the name) for them in the late 90s. |
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| ▲ | SoftTalker 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Some people just want a job, they don’t wrap up their sense of self worth in it. | | |
| ▲ | lukan 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Nothing to do with self worth, it is a meaningful job, but a fun one? | | |
| ▲ | wjnc 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Clear mission, a well set up team and autonomy in execution can make most jobs fun to do? Stress (due to), lack of autonomy, lack of clear mission and bad teams and management I think are the root of unhappy work? | |
| ▲ | cyber_kinetist 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not all jobs are fun, but they can be bearable if meaningful enough (whether that being useful for other people, or even just provide a living wage to support your family) |
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| ▲ | al_borland 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Most people I know don’t like chasing the latest framework that everyone will forget about in 6 months. | |
| ▲ | ahartmetz an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | IME (do note, the things I've dealt with were obsolete for a much shorter time), such work isn't particularly ugly even though the idea of it is. Some of it will feel like cheating because you just need to paraphrase a fix, some of it will be difficult because critical parts don't exist yet. Maybe you'll get to implement a tiny version of a new feature. | |
| ▲ | kijin 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Unless they found someone who really likes doing this kind of thing? There are more people like that than one might think. There's a sizable community of people who still play old video games. There are people who meticulously maintain 100 year old cars, restore 500 year old works of art, and find their passion in exploring 1000 year old buildings. The HN front page still gets regular posts lamenting loss of the internet culture of the 80s and 90s, trying to bring back what they perceive as lost. I'm sure there are a number of bearded dudes who would commit themselves to keeping an old distro alive, just for the sake of not having to deal with systemd for example. | | |
| ▲ | bpye 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > There's a sizable community of people who still play old video games. I went to the effort of reverse engineering part of Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 to add a resizeable windowed mode and fix it's behaviour with high poll rate mice... It can definitely be interesting to make old games behave on newer platforms. | | |
| ▲ | bfkwlfkjf 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Search YouTube for "gog noclip documentary", without quotes. Right up your alley. |
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| ▲ | k_bx 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I'm now deploying all my projects in Incus container (LXC). My base system is upgradeable, ZFS-based, in future will be IncusOS but now just Ubuntu. Incus is connected in cluster so I can: backup/copy projects, move between machines etc. Containers reuse host system's new kernel, while inside I get Ubuntu 22.04. I don't see a good reason, if 22.04 will get 15-year life support, to upgrade it much. It's a perfect combination for me, keeping the project on 22.04 essentially forever, as long as my 22.04 build-container can still build the new version. |
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| ▲ | HansHamster 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Isn't Incus/LXD separate from and running on top of LXC?
People sometimes seem to use the names interchangeably which can be annoying because I run just plain LXC but when looking stuff up and come across "this is how you do XYZ on LXC" they are actually talking about LXD and it doesn't really apply.
I can't recall what is was last time, but this has happened a couple of times already... | | |
| ▲ | k_bx 3 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Maybe, I'm a noob for now. Meaning Incus, LXC being the underlying tech. |
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| ▲ | justincormack 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The 15 year support is paid not free. | |
| ▲ | dotancohen 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Sell it to me! Why not docker? | | |
| ▲ | k_bx 3 minutes ago | parent [-] | | It's a container with full os: systemd, journald, tailscale, ssh inside. No need to learn new docker world, just install the deb with your software inside |
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| ▲ | jl6 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Nice, that means the latest Ubuntu LTS release (24.04) can be supported beyond the date of the Year 2038 Problem. Although theoretically now solved using 64-bit time_t, I wonder how robustly it’s been tested in real world deployments. |
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| ▲ | Animats 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Nice. Should be mandatory for home automation systems. Support must outlive the home warranty. |
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| ▲ | Vortigaunt 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| From what a quick google search told me, RHEL caps out at 13 years.[0] I'm curious what caused Canonical to offer 2 more years of lts support than Red Hat? [0]https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata |
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| ▲ | wkat4242 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I wonder how much this legacy addon costs. Is it available to consumers? |
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| ▲ | superkuh 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I've used Canonical's free 3-seat extended service mantainence (ESM) support on my one 14.04 LTS machine for a long time. It's so nice having a stable target for more than decade for my personal projects. I have so much software defined radio software that absolutely does break in ways I can't fix on a newer version of any Debian-alike. The ESM program has been a provider of peace of mind when still leaving that SDR machine connected to the internet and running javascript. >30-day trial for enterprises. Always free for personal use.
>Free, personal subscription for 5 machines for you or any business you own This "Pro" program also being free is a suprise to be sure, but a welcome one. |
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| ▲ | therealfiona 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| How many customers did this take? Wow... |
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| ▲ | unsnap_biceps 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It could just have been one with a very large check. | | |
| ▲ | MiddleEndian 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It doesn't seem unreasonable to me if you have the resources. If I could've paid Apple to somehow just support OS X 10.6 forever I'd probably still be a Mac/Hackintosh user lol | |
| ▲ | paulddraper 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | There’s at least one customer somewhere willing to pay $1 million for that. Plus adding a general feeling of confidence to the product as a whole. And safety knowing that you can upgrade for an extra 5 years of support if you need it. | | |
| ▲ | odie5533 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | The level of confidence is pretty incredible. Coming from someone who got hurt by CentOS. | | |
| ▲ | naniwaduni 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | One of the dirty secrets is that you don't need to back up confidence to sell it if you don't plan to be around when it falls apart. |
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| ▲ | ycombinete 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | These kinds of demands are becoming more common in b2b software. |
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| ▲ | benatkin 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This gives me a good sense of how old these versions are: https://documentation.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-for-developers/refer... 14.04 LTS has Python 3.4 as well as Python 2.7. |
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| ▲ | anonnon 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Translation: Ubuntu has customers willing to pay up to avoid using the latest "oxidized" versions of Ubuntu, and for a decade an a half, at that. And this was in the works before Cloudflare's Rust-rewrite took down half the internet. |
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| ▲ | littlestymaar 13 minutes ago | parent [-] | | What's the only HN user group that's more annoying than the Rust evangelical strike force: the anti Rust butthurt crusade. |
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