No, stable releases do get deprecation warnings, but that's not what LTS is. LTS is a service that's added by vendors to arbitrarily chosen versions. In fact, t

No, stable releases do get deprecation warnings, but that's not what LTS is. LTS is a service that's added by vendors to arbitrarily chosen versions. In fact, there is no such thing as "an LTS release." You can start offering LTS for JDK 12 tomorrow, making it -- retroactively -- LTS. The OpenJDK development process doesn't take those services into account; in fact the development process has no notion of LTS at all (e.g. can you see LTS mentioned here https://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk/11/ https://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk/11/ ?). All feature versions are equal in their stability. LTS is something a release can have, not something it is. All versions between 11 and 17 are stable, and none of them -- including 11 and 17 -- are major releases. Those are gone. LTS is a service designed for organizations with special constraints, and should be no means be your default choice. Moreover, there are multiple LTS services and they differ quite widely in what they offer and who they're aimed at. Put simply, LTS does not mean what it means in other projects. Do not choose it until you've learned exactly what the new model means and what LTS means.