My last post about good beginner-friendly KDE-focused operating systems sparked some discussions about the concept of “Long-Term Support” (LTS) releases.
But what does this term mean? It’s a bit generic-sounding, making it easy to interpret as meaning almost anything. So let’s go to the source: how the term is defined by the operating systems using it! Here are the non-commercial ones:
Security updates are provided by Debian security team for three years. This generally means that each stable release is supported for its whole life plus an extra year (or so) after a new version of stable is released. In addition, further security support is provided by the LTS and LTS/Extended projects.
LTS stands for long-term support — which means five years of free security and maintenance updates
The latest Long Term Support (LTS) version of the Kubuntu operating system for desktop PCs and laptops, Kubuntu 26.04 [is] supported with security and maintenance updates, until April 2029.
(I didn’t include openSUSE Leap because its marketing material doesn’t use this term, though what it offers is fairly similar in practice)
So these operating systems are fairly consistent about what “Long-Term Support” means to them:
- Each discrete OS release will continue receiving updates for a certain number of years.
- Those updates will include fixes for security issues.
- Those updates may include whatever “maintenance” means; Ubuntu & Kubuntu promise this, Debian doesn’t say.
- Those updates will not include any new features, UI improvements, or other non-bug-fix releases from the software’s developers. That is to say, each piece of software is effectively locked to a specific version for the life of the release.
That’s it! So let’s look at what’s NOT promised:
- Lack of bugs
- Lack of crashes
- Fixes for non-security issues
- Personal support for issues you encounter
- Support for newer hardware devices (Ubuntu offers “hardware enablement” kernels for desktop installs by default, but they come with no stated guarantees and don’t cover the parts of hardware support that go beyond the kernel)
That doesn’t mean an LTS release of Debian, Ubuntu, or Kubuntu will be devoid of these things. It just means they aren’t promised. Probably you’ll get a lot of them anyway, but there’s no guarantee.
I think this is where some of the persistent confusion around the LTS topic comes from.
LTS releases are fairly stable and reliable as long as you use the most popular software from their included software repositories. So in the circumstances when this stops being the case, I think sometimes people can feel betrayed. They think, “I thought this was supposed to be stable! Why didn’t anyone fix this bug yet? Where’s my long-term support?”
But Debian, Ubuntu, and Kubuntu never promised any level of stability, reliability, or absence of bugs. They promised that the version-locked software in their repos would receive security fixes for a certain number of years. Ubuntu and Kubuntu also offered a certain amount of non-guaranteed best-effort hardware compatibility improvements and non-security bug fixes.
That’s it!
So it’s important to understand what you’re actually getting with an LTS-style OS. And maybe it’s not for you. There are plenty of other options for people with different desires:
I want newer software
If you’re a software developer or a technology enthusiast, you may want to get software on or closer to its developers’ release schedules. This will give you a stream of new features, UI improvements, and fixes for bugs. In this case, the better option is a rapidly-updating OS like Arch Linux, openSUSE Tumbleweed, Fedora KDE, or one of their children.
The trade-off here is that you may have to live with some things that are currently working getting broken after updating. In other words, the bugs are unstable, unlike in an LTS OS where the bugs are stable.
I personally fall into this group, which is why I use a rapidly-updating OS and not an LTS OS.
I want fewer bugs
I think a lot of people choose an LTS OS to experience fewer bugs, but this is generally not a strength of the LTS product. When an LTS OS freezes on a specific set of software, all the bugs in those versions of the software are frozen, too. Unless the LTS OS provider fixes any of those bugs themselves or backports fixes for them, users will be exposed to them for the lifetime of the release.
With a rapidly-updating OS, when software developers fix bugs in their software, you’ll get those bug-fixes quickly. As long as the software itself is becoming less buggy over time, a rapidly-updating OS shipping software close to its developers’ release schedules will likewise become less buggy over time.
It’s not all puppies and rainbows, though. A fast pace of change means more opportunities for those developers to accidentally introduce new bugs, and also for the introduction of integration issues: bugs caused by software being mis-configured or incompatible with other software. LTS OSs excel at minimizing integration issues between software, because a frozen set of software isn’t a moving target for QA testing.
So in a lot of ways, this choice boils down to whether you’re more bothered by software bugs or by integration issues.
I want better hardware support
If the manufacturer of your device didn’t provide much or any Linux software support for it, a rapidly-updating OS is likewise a better option here. You’ll quickly get all the components that improve hardware support, not just the parts in the kernel.
I want a true stability guarantee
If time is money for you, this makes sense. And to get it, you’ll need to pay for a commercially-supported operating system. For example, Canonical offers “Ubuntu Pro” with a level of support that includes the following:
Build with confidence with 24/7/365 phone and ticket support. Get prompt help when something breaks on any of the packages in the Ubuntu Main and Universe repositories, including the most widely used open source applications and toolchains. Our 24/7 plans now include SLAs not only for initial response times, but also for ongoing follow-up updates ensuring continuous visibility and faster remediation throughout the lifecycle of your support case.
Wow! Now that’s support. It costs $300 per year for workstations (servers are over 5x as much).
Red Hat and SUSE offer similar services at similar prices.
And they aren’t cheap! But if time is money, those prices may look pretty reasonable. And you’ll get to talk to a perky and friendly person over the phone when you encounter a covered problem, and someone will to take direct responsibility for getting a fix delivered.
What about Flatpak and Snap?
In principle, these technologies allow an LTS-style OS to offer the best of both worlds: a stable base with apps updating more rapidly.
In practice, what you get is a mixing of both worlds. The base OS retains its LTS characteristics, while apps become rapidly-updating, giving you some exposure to breakage coming from new versions alongside more features, UI improvements, and fixes for existing bugs.
We’re spoiled for choice in our ecosystem, which means everyone can find a free software operating system that matches their needs and desires. But you have to know what those needs and desires are, and also successfully map them to the available options! Hopefully this blog post has helped explain what the LTS-style operating systems offer, and who should use them.
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