Lubuntu 18.04 (Bionic Beaver) was released April 27, 2018 and will reach End of Life on Friday, April 30, 2021. This means that after that date there will be no further security updates or bugfixes released. We highly recommend that you re-install with 20.04 as soon as possible if you are still running 18.04.
After April 30th, the only supported releases of Lubuntu will be 20.04 (until April 2023), 20.10 (until July 2021), and 21.04 (until January 2022). All other releases of Lubuntu will be considered unsupported, and will no longer receive any further updates (or support) from the Lubuntu team.
You can find instructions on how to install Lubuntu in our manual.
Note, due to the extensive changes required for the shift in desktop environments, the Lubuntu team does not support upgrading from 18.04 or below to any greater release. Doing so will result in a broken system. If you are on 18.04 or below and would like to upgrade, please do a fresh install. The installation image can be obtained from our downloads page.
For further details please refer to our forum post.
Please note: in the coming days, you may find Lubuntu pages on wiki.ubuntu.com will be moved (and if you access them via saved URLs, even search engines which rely on prior searches, youāll get errors). Lubuntu will be LXQt only going forward, so a wiki clean up task was created which Iāll action in a few days.
If you architecture is i686 or x86 (32-bit) (what Debian & Ubuntu both refer to as i386) then Lubuntu 18.04 LTS was the end-of-road for Lubuntu.
Later Releases (18.10 & 19.04)
Yes we released Lubuntu 18.10 with the modern LXQt desktop. Lubuntu even produced alpha ISOs into the disco (19.04) cycle, which if installed, package updates were provided until 19.04 reached EOL (though Lubuntu never officially supported disco/19.04 in i386), however both 18.10 & 19.04 reached EOL long ago meaning Lubuntu 18.04 LTS was the last i386 system supported.
Can I continue using it ?
Yes you could, Iād suggest fully exploring your support status using ubuntu-support-status. Packages found in the āmainā repository will still get security updates, where youāll note firefox still get security updates even if your desktop & many apps are now unsupported.
The risk is your decision, however if you have questions (understanding ubuntu-support-status or other), you can ask and Iāll give my thoughts/opinion in most cases.
What are my alternatives ?
There are a few; myself I also test (and love) Debian so itās all Iāll suggest. I tested Debian 10/Buster on my i386 hardware, and performance was on most boxes very similar (on my lowest powered box Lubuntu 18.04 well outperformed Xubuntu or Debian 10/Buster but on most hardware the performance difference was very small).
You know there is a thing called Extended Security Maintenance (ESM).
And it is until 2028!
I am using 1804 and I still receive all security updates and the kernel updates
Yes, we all know that ESM exists. The problem is that parts of the system will no longer get updates. The Ubuntu bits will happily keep updating as long as ESM lasts. The Lubuntu-specific bits will not.
So, not only will there be no community support, youāre playing a game of āI hope there are no security vulnerabilities in the Lubuntu bits.ā You can take that chance, but Iād suggest upgrading if you can upgrade. If youāve got a 32 bit system only, then it becomes marginally more logical to risk it.
Personally, Iād just move to a different distro if I only had 32 bit hardware.
In my warning post I tried to get users of 18.04 to use ubuntu-support-status to view their package status, which would have shown them only packages from the āmainā repository get 5 years of supported life, and its only these that get ESM support (and going by historical precedent of precise or trusty, it may not even be all of these the full term, or coverage may only be via HWE, however you will be given warning). ESM also only covers
āthe Ubuntu base OS and scale-out infrastructureā
With both the Canonical 3 year support & Community 3 year support packages now EOL for my 18.04 example box , the ubuntu-support-status example is now a lot simpler to read
guiverc@t43-lubu:~$ ubuntu-support-status
Support status summary of 't43-lubu':
You have 1332 packages (70.8%) supported until April 2023 (Canonical - 5y)
You have 0 packages (0.0%) that can not/no-longer be downloaded
You have 549 packages (29.2%) that are unsupported
Run with --show-unsupported, --show-supported or --show-all to see more details
guiverc@t43-lubu:~$
If you contrast the 29.2% now unsupported with what it was before Lubuntu 18.04 LTS reached EOL (10.9%) for my box, youāll note itās grown significantly. You arenāt receiving all security updates, only those relating to supported packages.
Addendum: I just noticed my pre-EOL example was a different box so my comparison isnāt perfectā¦ Whilst I can re-do the t43; I canāt re-do the 755 as itās now running Lubuntu 20.04 LTS
Just saying that I am disappointed in 20.04. Getting to look more like (ugh) Win 10. Been with Lubuntu for some years but once it start showing its age I will be jumping ship. Wish someone would tell me where to go to find something to replace it (simple, clean) but donāt know where else to ask any more.
I mean if youāre simply after another desktop/distro, there is a plethora to choose fromāsome of which are basically sister projects to Lubuntu. I disagree with Lubuntu becoming like Windowsā¦ anyway, Iām not here to argue.
You can also just remove whatever apps you donāt want or useā¦ itās usually not that difficult. Just gotta open up either Discover or Muon and ta-da. I prefer terminal but thereās an option for everyone.
If youāre deadset on changing though, you can maybe switch to Debian which I would argue is maybe cleaner than Ubuntu but donāt quote me on that. However, some might say itās not as simpleāin which case I would suggest to just try another Ubuntu flavorāmaybe one that tries to be lightweight, like Xubuntu.
Anyway, itās your choice. You can always choose what you feel is best for you and that is the benefit of Linux, unlike Windows which forces you into things.
Donāt forget you can customize it to make it your own.
I added a panel on the left side of one monitor (right side of the other) so I have a Unity (7) style quick launcher on the side of my monitor (pic in screenshot thread of how it looked like July-2019 which shows 2 of my 4 panels only; others show only when mouse is over them), still using the same system now only itās now impish.
If you donāt like the themes, icon sets, you can download moreā¦
But donāt forget an aim of LXQt is being light, so many decisions are made with that in mind.
Also if you upgraded from 18.04 to 20.04 without re-install, you werenāt seeing an optimum desktop (unless you fixed the LXDE left-over bits yourself).
Iāll provide
but in the end whatās right for you, only you can decide.
I kind of like that xubuntu after a quick look. I think you are right, the idea is to find something you can tailor to get more or less what you want. And Iāve worked with linux over the years to know that you do have to be a āmechanicā sometimes. So thanks agaian -
Mike Gallagher
I got the list of those āunsopportedā packages and picked randomly 8 of them with name not related to some app or theme, even though there a lot of packages there which are apps, plugins or codecs. For example, literally, abiword abiword-common audacious audacious-plugins audacious-plugins-data blueman ā¦ gnome-mpv gdebi gdebi-coreā¦ and on and on. That would be a big bite from those 20%!
Coming to those 8 random packages which are not related to applications or plugins or codecs, NONE of those 8 where anyhow related to security!
So that is another big bite from 20%ā¦
Personally I am now convinced that you are lying to users of lxde lubuntu in order to faster get rid of and forget it.
Otherwise I donāt understand how you could tell that security on 18.04 is not supported. A big amount of 20% are packages related to either Lubuntu itself like icons, themes, or apps and whole bunch of related staff, which is old.
But you can get rid of unsupported apps and use modern apps and everything will be fine. Or you can stay with old ones if they work fine, which is my case.
Finally I would suggest you, do not recommend people to leave 18.04, let them enjoy last years of 18.04 usage. LXDE is lighter and faster than LXQt.
I fear, you do not have a good understanding of security.
The team of Lubuntu is not lying to the LXDE users. The support for Lubuntu-specific packages in the repositories of 18.04 ended. That is a fact. The same is true for Kubuntu, Xubuntu and other community-driven distributions.
Yes, that is true. You donāt understand, how it works. The packages do not appear magically.
Every new version of a package gets packaged first, reviewed, and then uploaded to the repository. The team of Lubuntu was doing this work and has clearly communicated, that the team is doing it during 3 years for the 18.04 release. And by the way, you did not receive many packages in the 3 years of support, because the upstream developers (LXDE project) did not fix any important bugs.
After the 3 years of support, there is no one from the team, which will do the work for LXDE related packages.
No, Lubuntu is a stable release. Lubuntu is not replacing apps during the lifecycle of a release. And users of stable releases do not expect this neither.
Finally I would suggest you, that you inform yourself about the topic and also about security.
And the users could enjoy the last year of 18.04 between april 2020 and april 2021.
even if your desktop & many apps are now unsupported.