59
Ubuntu Pro subscription - should you pay to use Linux?
(optimizedbyotto.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2026
59 points (92.8% liked)
Linux
11584 readers
398 users here now
A community for everything relating to the GNU/Linux operating system (except the memes!)
Also, check out:
Original icon base courtesy of lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Ubuntu Pro gives you 5 more years of security updates for versions that are EoL. You can see it here if you scroll down to the maintenance schedule https://ubuntu.com/security/esm
Glad to hear it's extended maintenance for old software and not making their private users less secure.
Unfortunately, it's both. They also hold back security updates for non-latest releases that are still covered under Standard support. I work in an environment where we track new CVEs for our builds, and we constantly see vulnerabilities for 22.04 that are fixed in Pro but not made available otherwise.
Sure, technically you can opt into Pro as an individual user without paying, but it puts everyone who uses off the shelf installs and containers at risk and is therefore an immoral and unethical process in my opinion.
Pro involves Canonical making unilateral updates to certain packages, while the main universe relies on the package’s maintainers to make updates available. Unless you were to want Canonical to take over development of every bit of linux software, I don’t see how they could improve this.