Question about Ubuntu Pro for Official Ubuntu Flavors

Project Discussion Ubuntu Pro
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Hi Pro Team,

The Ubuntu Flavor leads have run into an ambiguity issue when it comes to support of Ubuntu Pro. For Context:

  • Official Ubuntu Flavors are built from the repositories without additions or subtractions. These include main, universe, multiverse, and restricted.
  • Ubuntu Flavors, just like Ubuntu Desktop and Sever, release an LTS every two years, but instead of a Five-Year support, they opt for Three-Year support.
  • After this Three-Year support, the flavors traditionally go completely End-Of-Life (EOL) without any further support offered by community.
  • These are community-supported, and Canonical has traditionally made it a policy to keep these community supported without any support offered by Canonical.

However, it has been brought to our attention that with Ubuntu Pro, Canonical would provide support via security updates for any user that has subscribed and that, since Flavors are no different (built primarily from main and universe) that there would be no difference; that they would receive the ESM regardless of the community support.

Then it becomes a matter of the ambiguity of the term ā€œsupportā€ which gets misinterpreted quite a bit. For users, that could mean ā€œtechnical supportā€ in which they expect to be offered technical support beyond the EOL cutoff.

Hereā€™s a scenario that would potentially play-out:

Itā€™s June 2027. User comes requesting support.

ā€œIā€™m having trouble with _____.ā€

ā€œWhat version are you running?ā€

ā€œ24.04 and Iā€™m subscribed to Ubuntu Pro.ā€

In that case weā€™d have to dismiss the user explaining that theyā€™re only receiving security updates and that we donā€™t actually support the version theyā€™re running anymore, which gets very confusing.

Ubuntu Pro is being advertised via apt, and insoftware-properties-gtkand update-manager for those flavors that have it (Lubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, and Kubuntu have software-properties-qt and alternate methods of handling updates). However, Ubuntu Desktop has gnome-initial-setup which advertises Ubuntu Pro upon first login. Edubuntu would have had this as well, but decided to remove it for branding reasons.

With that in mind, my question is: does Ubuntu Pro officially apply to Official Ubuntu Flavors? We would really like a definitive answer from a member of the Ubuntu Pro team.

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Hi @eeickmeyer

thanks for raising that.

  1. Ubuntu Pro is a subscription on top of Ubuntu LTS. It provides some additional services such security patching commitment from Canonical for High and Critical CVEs in ā€˜mainā€™ and ā€˜universeā€™ repositories for 10 years. You can read more about it in the Ubuntu Pro FAQ Ubuntu Pro - FAQ

  2. Ubuntu Pro is paid for enterprises and free for personal users on up to 5 machines, and up to 50 machines for Ubuntu community. It does not provide phone/ ticket support.

  3. Enterprise users (paid users) can opt-in to get support by subscribing to ā€œUbuntu Pro + Supportā€ offers. Phone/ ticket support is not offered in the free/ personal tier.

  4. As you pointed out, Ubuntu Flavours are built from the repositories without additions or subscriptions, so all packages in Ubuntu Flavours could receive 10 years security maintenance with Ubuntu Pro.

  5. I feel that it should work fine, but as the Ubuntu Pro team, we have not tested any Pro related features with Ubuntu Flavours. Perhaps this is something you could test on your end? Also, please mind that our Support team doesnā€™t offer phone/ ticket support for Flavours. It is explicitly pointed out in the Ubuntu Pro Service Description https://ubuntu.com/legal/ubuntu-pro

  6. In conclusion - Canonical does not offer phone/ ticket support for Community Flavours. But when Ubuntu Pro subscription is attached, I believe that Flavours users would benefit from the Ubuntu Pro security maintenance for 10 years.

hope it helps!

3 Likes
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Thank you very much!

That clears up a lot, and this is definitely something we can point users at if they have any questions.

For Edubuntu, like Ubuntu Desktop, we were unable to remove the gnome-initial-setup for a userā€™s first sign-in, so they are presented with Ubuntu Pro for 24.04 LTS upon initial sign-in. We will likely have to release note this so that thereā€™s no confusion there.

Anyhow, thank you so much for the information. This is invaluable!

2 Likes