UBUNTU 18.10 SUPPORT: what will happen if it is no longer supported?

I am new to ubuntu… I’ve read in the ubuntu 18.10 notes that it has only 9 months for its support…my question is

  1. Is it stable to use?
  2. what are the possibilities if its not supported?

Thank You…

Yes, it is. Once a distro is released, it is stable to use. There is no automatic updates/upgrades, so if one is worried about any breakage, one should not update manually. By experience, I can say that usually any Ubuntu release is stable. More than a decade, I use only the development releases (now 19.04), usually don’t have a problem with daily updates. If, by chance, any problem happens, the next upgrade would cover that.

It is pretty easy and quick to install any Ubuntu derivative, and, if you keep your Home in another partition, none of your data would get lost, if, by chance, your installation gets bricked. It usually doesn’t. :slight_smile:

Once, the new 19.04 is released upgrade to it using the system upgrader.

This site is for the co-ordination of the Ubuntu project(s), and not support.

For Ubuntu Support options, please have a look at https://community.ubuntu.com/t/finding-help/712

As to your question, yes Ubuntu 18.10 is stable & fit to use. Before it’s EOL (end-of-life date) you will be offered to upgrade to Ubuntu 19.04 (or you can `do-release-upgrade yourself when 19.04 is released next month). Ubuntu 19.04 is also a 9 month release, but you’ll be offered to release-upgrade to 19.10 before then, then to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

Your other option is Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (LTS=long-term-support, or a five (5) year life span). By default 18.04 LTS will offer upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04.1 when it gets released, ie. a LTS release upgrades to the next LTS release by default, but you can put yourself off the LTS path & go to 18.10, 19.04, 19.10 then 20.04 and decide again. LTS releases are even years & April.

Ubuntu 18.10 means the 2018.October release; and 19.04 which comes out next month likewise means 2019.April. ie. Ubuntu releases are yy.mm in format, so the EOL date is pretty easy to calculate (9 months for all but even.year.april releases which are 5 years being LTS).

@guiverc
This looks like a general question about Ubuntu, rather than looking for support. Anyway, if you’d upgrade from 18.10 to 19.04, the root filesystem you get would be somewhat different from the root filesystem of freshly installed 19.04, I believe. 18.10 has /bin, /lib… and /sbin separately, while 19.04 has those, linked to /usr. Wouldn’t it be an uphill task to rearrange these folders in an upgrade? I remember this problem few years ago with Arch.

Interesting, what would happen, when we “do-release-upgrade” from 18.04 LTS to 20.04 LTS. Would the /bin turn into a link to /usr/bin, etc?

Thanks @chanath.

I hadn’t noticed the change of directories (my box running 19.04 box was upgraded from 18.10/18.04/17…)

I’ll have to explore this when I have time. Thanks !

I have those merged in /usr with usrmerge. Everything’s fine, other than libpng12, which won’t install if /bin, /lib, etc. are merged under /usr. I had to download and build from source because the one in Ubuntu and Debian repos aren’t updated.

Closing.

The original two questions posed by the OP are classic questions answered regularly in the Ubuntu support venues.

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