Canonical extends support duration for Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04

Canonical is expanding its Extended Security Maintenance offering to the lts releases of Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 16.04. This means that subscription customers will receive ten years of support from the release date.

The extended lifespan of the Ubuntu versions means that support for 14.04 Trusty Tahr will now end in April 2024 instead of April 2022 and that of 16.04 Xenial Xerus will end in April 2026 instead of April 2024. Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04 were released in 2014 and 2016 respectively.

In both cases, this concerns so-called long-term support releases. Canonical has lts releases scheduled every two years. Ubuntu 18.04 LTS was the first version in 2018 to receive ten years instead of five years of support as part of an Extended Security Maintenance offering.

That offer has now been extended to the older releases, so that users of this software can also look forward to security updates and kernel live patches for a longer period of time. According to Canonical, this gives them extra time to implement their upgrade plans.

The extended support only includes fixes for vulnerabilities that are labeled ‘high’ and ‘critical’. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS supports the 64bit-x86 version, while 16.04 LTS supports s390x, Arm64 and x86-64. For enterprise users, it’s paid support, but for personal use, ESM is part of the Ubuntu Advantage Essential subscription, which is free for individuals with a maximum of three systems.