I upgrade my system whenever a new version of Ubuntu is released, but that’s not case with businesses using Ubuntu in their servers. They would like to remain in a stable environment for a longer period and do the OS upgrade once in 2 or 3 years. That is where Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support) comes into play. Canonical has assured that they would support some releases for a longer time than others. They released Ubuntu Dapper 6.06 LTS saying it would be supported for the next 5 years. This should include security updates, new hardware support etc.

I recently read Herman’s blog about Ubuntu Dapper not supporting some of the new hardwares. He wrote that they had problems making Dapper work with some of the new hardwares. They didn’t want to upgrade to Edgy as Edgy didn’t suit them well. You can’t expect businesses to upgrade every six months. They have to consider many option before they do the OS upgrade. Adding hardware shouldn’t be as difficult as upgrading the OS for enterprises. You can’t expect companies to upgrade their OS each time they upgrade their hardware.

When you offer long term support, better make sure you support all new hardwares too. Companies won’t use Ubuntu unless they are sure that Ubuntu would offer both security and feature support. Fabián Rodríguez from Canonical wrote in the comments that if the company has a commercial support agreement with Canonical, then they can escalate those issues with Canonical support team and they would provide a solution within few hours or days. That’s a good sign and that’s the right approach. Companies should opt for paid support if they really want their problems/bugs to be fixed as soon as possible. I think Canonical is taking the right step if what Fabian said was true. They should make sure that LTS is really LTS.