LTS is a guideline about extended support, extended beta cycles, and less potentially breaking changes vs the non-LTS releases. I don't see it as saying much o

LTS is a guideline about extended support, extended beta cycles, and less potentially breaking changes vs the non-LTS releases. I don't see it as saying much of anything about the upgrade path, but rather that if you do an apt-get update on an existing LTS box, you can expect to not get major version bumps of tools and libraries and thus less breakage. Of course, you don't get the latest and greatest software, but for most server deployments, that's a desired compromise. And at least I never do an upgrade anyway -- I always do a fresh install from one LTS to the next one on bare metal -- and simply recycle VMs in the cloud.