For desktop? Ubuntu is one of the worst and slowest desktop distributions; nobody should be paying for that.
If you want technical support, of course you do. Just because a code is open source does not mean it should be free. Developers need to eat too. Another issue is that there are distributions such as ZorinOS that charge money for the right to use a pro version, when in reality it is the same version that you can configure yourself and that ZorinOS belongs to a company, not a user community.
Paying for services isn't philosophically incompatible with FOSS, that's how companies like RedHat broke through back in the day, but paying for "quick and high-quality security updates" strikes me as alarming. Am I to take from that that they're holding back high-quality security updates from some users? Unless maybe we're talking about extended support for EoL software.
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.
for 22.04
What about 25.10?
That one is not LTS, you'll want to update to 26.04 sooner rather than later.
yea I would say that's what home users should be doing anyways? idk to me it doesn't make sense to be so far behind on updates when the non-LTS is available
I take it your build is dependant on the community-maintained Universe repo?
https://ubuntu.com/security/cves/about#security
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories/Ubuntu
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1452497/what-are-esm-apps-and-how-do-they-relate-to-ubuntu-pro
If they already to the work for esm-apps repo then they could at least send those fixes over to the universe repo until the release version is EoL one would think. On the other hand I have no idea what lives in universe and what lives in main.
That was a rabbit hole.
Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but RedHat also had more recent updates compared to CentOS, while also being certified.
None of this affects what happened "back in the day" which is what I was talking about.
That said, my understanding of the current packaging philosophy of RHEL/CentOS Stream is that embargoed security fixes go in to RHEL first, then to CentOS Stream once the embargo is lifted (that's pretty much as you'd expect), otherwise everything goes in to CentOS Stream first. Unless you have counter-examples I've not heard of?
I mean, redhat has been a paid version and it's been around for years
Pro is free for 5 devices for individuals.
If you are running a business, Yes pay for pro in the same way you would have paid for windows.
Just use Debian for better security.
Saving you a click: No.
But, consider donating to your distro of choice.
Seems fine, I don't see why a home/DIY user would stay on an Ubuntu LTS release for more than 5 years.
I’d be happy to pay for things like Ubuntu Touch to have quickly a viable alternative to Android and iOS. It’s possible to donate, but donations tend to not be reliable or make development viable at all. Paying for Open Source seems fine, as long as fund allocation is fully transparent.
Yeah in the end it's big tech that decides what should be developed and what should not. Like for a period of time Microsoft was the biggest contributor to open source, but that's only because they wanted to make windows VMs work...
It might sound kinda radical, but I feel that we need a culture shift to people paying for things, even if it’s small amounts, if we want to be truly competitive to „big tech“. Big tech uses venture capital to offer free stuff and thereby establish monopolies. We expect developers to work for free. It does work to an extent, but obviously it’s limited. And also people deserve being paid for their work.
Some work could be done in the area of how the funds are managed and presented, so it’s transparent and fair.
If you need what they provide, I don’t see why not. It’s great to monetarily support open source. Devs need to eat too.
TIL as a normal Ubuntu user, you don't get quick and high-quality security updates.
You do, but not when your distro is EoL and not with livepatching to avoid reboots.
Not true. 22.04 is not EoL and it doesn't get all CVE patches backported unless you're on Pro.
Huh, that was hidden deeper than I like.
https://ubuntu.com/security/cves/about#security
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories/Ubuntu
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1452497/what-are-esm-apps-and-how-do-they-relate-to-ubuntu-pro
edit: adding some relevant links
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