Ubuntu 18.04 LTS support lifecycle will be extended to 10 years

At the OpenStack Summit in Berlin on November 13-15, Canonical and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth announced in a keynote speech that the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS support lifecycle would be extended from five years to 10 years.

With this decision, Shuttleworth explained that the main reason is that the financial services and telecommunications industries, as well as IoT devices used in production lines, require long-term support. Also, in a later interview, Shuttleworth revealed that Ubuntu 16.04, which was initially scheduled to reach its end of life in April 2021, will also receive a more extended support period.

In his keynote address, Shuttleworth also said that in the past two years, Canonical had attracted a large number of Red Hat customers to join Ubuntu. With  IBM’s acquisition of Red Hat, it may lead to more customers turning to Ubuntu.