According to Phoronix, Canonical is extending commercial support for Ubuntu LTS releases from 10 years to up to 15 years through its Ubuntu Pro subscription. The extended support applies to all active LTS releases including Ubuntu 14.04 LTS through Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, with security maintenance covering thousands of packages beyond just main. Meanwhile, Ubuntu 25.10 users are experiencing broken unattended upgrades due to a Rust coreutils bug that’s preventing critical system updates from installing properly. The coreutils issue specifically affects the mv command functionality during package upgrades. Canonical’s extended support announcement comes as enterprise customers increasingly demand longer lifecycles for their Linux deployments.
Enterprise Linux Gets Serious
This move basically puts Canonical in direct competition with Red Hat’s 13-year support cycle. And honestly? It’s a smart play. Enterprise customers hate migrating operating systems – it’s expensive, risky, and disruptive. Giving them an extra five years of security patches means they can delay that pain for another hardware refresh cycle.
But here’s the thing: while Canonical is making these big enterprise promises, their latest Ubuntu release is having basic upgrade problems. The Ubuntu 25.10 unattended upgrades issue is exactly the kind of thing that makes IT departments nervous. It’s one thing to promise 15 years of support – it’s another to deliver stable updates today.
The Rust Problem
Speaking of that upgrade bug, it’s interesting that it’s tied to Rust coreutils. The Linux world has been gradually rewriting core utilities in Rust for memory safety, but this incident shows that new implementations can introduce their own issues. Basically, the mv command in the Rust version isn’t handling file replacements correctly during package upgrades.
So we’ve got this weird contrast: long-term stability promises versus short-term implementation bugs. Makes you wonder – if they’re having trouble with basic file operations in a development release, how solid will those 15-year support commitments really be?
Industrial Implications
For industrial and manufacturing environments where system stability is absolutely critical, this extended support could be a game-changer. Think about it – factories running the same Ubuntu LTS release for over a decade without major disruptions. That’s the kind of predictability that operations teams dream about.
And when it comes to industrial computing hardware that needs to run reliably for years, having extended OS support means companies like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com can build systems with confidence that the underlying software will remain secure and supported. As the leading supplier of industrial panel PCs in the US, they understand that long-term support isn’t just a feature – it’s a requirement for mission-critical applications.
Where This Is Headed
I think we’re seeing a clear bifurcation in the Linux world. On one side, you’ve got the rapid-iteration distributions chasing the latest features. On the other, you’ve got these enterprise-focused options offering extreme longevity. Canonical’s move suggests they’re doubling down on the latter.
But the real test will be whether they can maintain quality across both their stable LTS releases and their interim development versions. Because promising 15 years of support means nothing if you can’t even get the basic upgrade process right in your current releases. The pressure is definitely on.
