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Attempts to apt upgrade on my 20.04 workstation is met with a notice that certain security updates require a Pro subscription with “esm-apps” enabled. My deskt

Attempts to apt upgrade on my 20.04 workstation is met with a notice that certain security updates require a Pro subscription with “esm-apps” enabled. My desktop has been nagging me with notifications — daily — that 20.04 will no longer be supported this year. This despite 20.04 being an LTS release that should provide security updates for another couple of years. Sure, this might be a simple bug in their apt implementation, but it’s been present for weeks now. It’s a sign of corporate-driven rot, and my 30 years experience in the industry tells me that this is the tip of an iceberg that could sink their Titanic. I want off the boat before it sinks.

donmcronald 4y ago
It's really hard to find a clear answer of what's going on too. After looking at their website [1] and a forum thread [2] it makes me think they're going to hold updates that would have gone into 'universe' hostage until you sign up for Ubuntu Pro. The thing I really don't get is that I always assumed 'universe' was mainly driven by 3rd parties. Who's writing the security patches? I can't imagine Ubuntu is capable of doing that for +23k apps, so I'm guessing the maximum they're doing is packaging and the minimum is simply giving us a new repository name that's paid instead of free. Plus, how does "best effort" work for LTS updates if the finished patch/update is already sitting in the ESM repo? There's not really any extra effort required to push those into another repository, so I think the support for 'universe' will become arbitrary. My hunch is that 'universe' updates are going to cease to exist in Ubuntu if you're not paying for Ubuntu Pro. I have no definitive proof of that, but it's not clear what they're trying to do and I tend to assume the worst in those situations. That forum thread feels like they're being intentionally vague about what they're trying to do which I don't like. Can anyone here explain what's actually going on with updates in Ubuntu now? 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/esm https://ubuntu.com/security/esm 2. https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/why-is-extended-security-maintenance-needed-for-apps-in-ubuntu-20-04-x-lts-in-2021/25871 https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/why-is-extended-security-main...

donmcronald 4y ago

It's really hard to find a clear answer of what's going on too. After looking at their website [1] and a forum thread [2] it makes me think they're going to hold updates that would have gone into 'universe' hostage until you sign up for Ubuntu Pro. The thing I really don't get is that I always assumed 'universe' was mainly driven by 3rd parties. Who's writing the security patches? I can't imagine Ubuntu is capable of doing that for +23k apps, so I'm guessing the maximum they're doing is packaging and the minimum is simply giving us a new repository name that's paid instead of free. Plus, how does "best effort" work for LTS updates if the finished patch/update is already sitting in the ESM repo? There's not really any extra effort required to push those into another repository, so I think the support for 'universe' will become arbitrary. My hunch is that 'universe' updates are going to cease to exist in Ubuntu if you're not paying for Ubuntu Pro. I have no definitive proof of that, but it's not clear what they're trying to do and I tend to assume the worst in those situations. That forum thread feels like they're being intentionally vague about what they're trying to do which I don't like. Can anyone here explain what's actually going on with updates in Ubuntu now? 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/esm https://ubuntu.com/security/esm 2. https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/why-is-extended-security-maintenance-needed-for-apps-in-ubuntu-20-04-x-lts-in-2021/25871 https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/why-is-extended-security-main...