gpg: Signature made Thu Jan 28 16:47:36 2021 UTC
gpg: using DSA key 2099B64CBF15490B
gpg: Good signature from "Andy Smith <andy@strugglers.net>" [unknown]
gpg: aka "Andrew James Smith <andy@strugglers.net>" [unknown]
gpg: aka "Andy Smith (UKUUG) <andy.smith@ukuug.org>" [unknown]
gpg: aka "Andy Smith (BitFolk Ltd.) <andy@bitfolk.com>" [unknown]
gpg: aka "Andy Smith (Linux User Groups UK) <andy@lug.org.uk>" [unknown]
gpg: aka "Andy Smith (Cernio Technology Cooperative) <andy.smith@cernio.com>" [unknown]
Hello,
On:
https://bitfolk.com/techspec.html#toc_2_Available_Linux_distributions
I am listing Ubuntu EOL dates as found at:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases
However, it seems that the EOL dates from the Ubuntu wiki refer to
Extended Security Maintenance:
https://ubuntu.com/security/esm
If I understand things correctly, this:
- covers only a small subset of the archive
- requires an Ubuntu Advantage account
- entitlement to ESM updates is only available for free for
personal use on up to 3 machines
So, for example, the recent "sudo" security issue is not available
for 14.04 LTS users unless they meet the above requirements.
If I have misunderstood things can someone correct me?
If not, I don't think it is particularly clear of us to list those
EOL dates on BitFolk's page and instead we should list the "End of
Standard Support" ones.
Thoughts?
And if we do list "End of Standard Support" dates, should that be
matched with "end of stable support" dates for Debian? The situation
for Debian is not straightforward either:
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases#Production_Releases
While LTS and ELTS are available free to everyone (BitFolk is one of
monetary sponsors that makes that possible), they do only cover a
subset of what was in Debian stable.
A summary of what each thing means for Debian is something like:
Stable Security:
- Supported until release end of life
- Package maintainers and security team are supposed to provide
security fixes for every package in the stable release
- buster EOL: some time in 2022
Long Term Support:
- Dedicated team of paid developers provide security fixes on a
best effort basis; sometimes package maintainers help.
- Known to only cover a subset of the archive; most important
packages do get updates.
- buster LTS EOL: likely some time in 2024
Extended LTS:
- Even smaller team of paid developers provide security fixes
- buster ELTS EOL: likely some time in 2026
Which is these things is fair to call a supported Debian release?
Really I'd just like to keep some consistency.
(Personal controversial interjection: I'm no CentOS fan but this is
exactly what people will miss about CentOS. It was a straightforward
10 year support commitment. Which was a massive commitment. It
wasn't always timely, but you knew that RHEL would get an update and
then CentOS would. For 10 years. That has value.)
Cheers,
Andy
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
