Canonical releases free version of Ubuntu Pro for small businesses

Canonical has announced a free version of Ubuntu Pro. Small business customers can use the operating system, intended for added security, on up to five devices in their network. Ubuntu Pro is available for any LTS distro as of 16.04.

Ubuntu Pro is still in beta, but Canonical Will the service be offered for free? to small and medium-sized enterprises. “Since we first started using Ubuntu LTS, our enterprise customers have been asking us to offer more and more within the open source landscape under a private commercial license,” Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth wrote. That is why the company is now releasing the paid service for those small customers for free.

They can use Ubuntu Pro on up to five devices within their network. If they are Ubuntu Community Members and actively participate in the OS, they can use Pro on up to 50 devices. On top of that, they pay $25 a year per workstation or $500 a year for servers. Ubuntu Pro is available for all LTS releases from Ubuntu 16.04 up to the current 22.04.

Ubuntu Pro is a paid security layer for business Ubuntu users. The service is protected against known CVE-registered vulnerabilities, not only in the OS itself but also in external packages and applications such as phpMyAdmin, Apache or Rust. To that end, Ubuntu works with companies that scan for such CVEs. In addition, Ubuntu Pro meets compliance and certification requirements such as FIPS 140-2 or PCI-DSS.