Hello.
In https://lubuntu.me/jammy-backports-22-04-1/ has PPA LXQT updates.
Lubuntu team has plans to PPA LXQT for Focal ?
Thanks for reply.
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Lubuntu 20.04.5 LTS is currently the Lubuntu QA testing focus, as itâs our next release on 1 September 2022.
That release however is the last expected release intended for Lubuntu 20.04 LTS, which reaches itâs EOL in April 2023.
Currently the Lubuntu 20.04 LTS manual can be read via https://manual.lubuntu.me/lts/ however that is expected to be replaced by the 22.04 LTS manual when Lubuntu 22.10 is released in October and the current 22.04 manual link becomes the 22.10 manual link.
These are the plans currently for focal or 20.04.
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As far as I know, the developers (who I work closely with) currently have no plans to backport LXQT 1.1.0 to Focal.
Lubuntu 20.04 goes out of support in less than a year, and 22.04.1 has been released, so I would recommend you back up your data and upgrade your system so that you donât end up having to cram in an upgrade just before the EOL date. Once your system is upgraded, you will be able to install LXQT 1.1.0 using the Lubuntu Backports PPA.
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Thanks for all replies.
Make sense.
Have an nice week.
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This doesnât provide any more than prior response, but another reference can be found on our Lubuntu 22.04.1 release notes
Lubuntu 20.04 LTS will be supported until April 2023, and we are limiting changes to critical fixes and underlying system changes shipped with all other Ubuntu flavors.
Also, if or when you plan on release-upgrading to Lubuntu 22.04 LTS please take note of the section in the release notes titled âNotice about upgrading from Lubuntu 20.04 LTS with LXQt:â.
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Canonical support Ubuntu 20.04 until 2025-04-23.
That support is only for security and libraries updates ?
Lubuntu is support until 2023-04. That support is only for components added in Lubuntu ?
Why Lubuntu have less support time than the Ubuntu release ?
Iâll answer the second question first since I think it will make sense of things better.
According to a quick Google search, in 2020, Canonical (the company who creates Ubuntu) had five hundred and five employees. Obviously itâs likely that not all of them directly work on the OS itself, but the company has a rather significant force behind it.
On the other hand, the Lubuntu team consists mostly of nine people - Simon (release manager), Thomas (sysadmin, developer), Dan (developer), Chris (tester, news writer), Leo (tester), Lyn (documentation writer), David (tester), sudodus (tester, tech support), and me (tech support, catch-all guy). Thereâs others, but those nine are our most active members (IIRC). Even with our whole team, we sometimes end up scrambling to catch up with the amount of work involved in developing, maintaining, and supporting the whole project.
With a three-year support cycle, the Lubuntu team is able to do a really good job of making a functional OS, in part because we have only about three versions of Lubuntu to support at any given moment, sometimes only two. Were we to have a five-year support cycle, we would have to keep up with more like four or five versions at once, which would add a substantial testing, development, and support burden to the already strained team. (Note that there may also be other reasons for the shorter support cycle, but this is the best one I can think of off the top of my head.)
Well, no. That support is indeed for security and library updates, but it also covers app updates for certain apps included with Ubuntu Desktop (like the GNOME Shell). Again, this only applies to Ubuntu itself since Ubuntu is backed by the force of an entire company, not just a small team of developers working in their free time. And while our small team does get to use the awesome framework given to us by Canonical, we have to maintain all the other bits (like LXQt) ourselves⌠and that is a far more difficult and time-consuming task than you might think.
It is true that, if you use an end-of-live version of Lubuntu that is still supported in Ubuntu (like Lubuntu 18.04), you will still get security and library updates for the parts of Lubuntu that are in Ubuntuâs âmainâ repository (all the stuff that Canonical maintains). That wonât cover everything, but it will still cover a lot. So you can use these âhalf-EOLâ versions of Lubuntu without too much risk (though not without any risk), and they will still get some updates. They just wonât get all of the updates that a fully supported Lubuntu version would get, and they wonât be officially supported on the tech support channels.
(P.S.: When I talk about our team being strained, donât misunderstand me to mean that weâre suffering or anything - we all love doing what weâre doing (at least I know I love doing what Iâm doing), and just because itâs tricky sometimes doesnât mean that anything bad is happening to us, it just means that itâs tricky sometimes. Weâve been getting through it happily for the last⌠how many years? canât remember right now, and weâll continue to be doing this hopefully for many years to come. That being said, if you think something you can help with and would like to help out, weâre easy to reach! https://lubuntu.me/links/ has a good list of ways to communicate (we prefer Matrix on the #lubuntu-devel channel), and https://manual.lubuntu.me/stable/B/Contributing.html has a list of ways you can help out!)
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@ArrayBolt3 Thanks for your long but interesting answers of the two questions.
My remarks here are only about LXQt proper. I am wondering why people keep asking about backports of this product. As I recall it, and what I experience many years already, Lubuntu is all about stability, based on a modern (and safe) OS, which allows you to run modern (and safe) applications.
LXQt is a nice, fast and simple to use product. And it happens to be at the heart of the Lubuntu OS, not one of the many options of desktop metaphores you can choose from and install (on Lubuntu).
If you want a bleeding edge GUI maybe LXQt is not the thing you should use, and hence Lubuntu maybe is not your thing. The same If you need to use the latest features from the Linux kernel. That is not going to happen with neither Ubuntu or Lubuntu.
Iâve checked the differences between LXQt 0.16, 0.17 and 1.0.0, and so on. Not so many things are going on there between different versions. Besides perhaps some bling-bling, most users will not notice the differences, or need upgrades right away.
As I understand from the response above, the Lubuntu team has enough on its plate. Backporting comes with extra responsibilities (and/or expectations). It is costly in many respects, and I suggest not to do it.
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Ubuntu in the past used to be supported for three years just as all flavors are. The support for âUbuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Cloud and Ubuntu Coreâ were increased to five years, and that applies to everything on the installation media for those products (ie. mostly packages from âmainâ repository, with none from âuniverseâ).
The âuniverseâ packages are the community supported, and the three years has never been extended. Youâll find this in all release notices; eg. Ubuntu 20.04.4
Maintenance updates will be provided for 5 years for Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Cloud, and Ubuntu Core. All the remaining flavours will be supported for 3 years. Additional security support is available with ESM (Extended Security Maintenance).
Yes the repositories remain open for the five years (including âuniverseâ) so itâs possible for anyone in the community that has the skill, time, etc. to prepare/submit SRU (stable release update) of packages with fixes, but itâs not expected given teams agree to support LTS releases for the three years (a pretty sizable commitment). If you go back to prior releases as well; youâll note not all of the 18.04 flavors were actually LTS or long-term-support, as the three years for âuniverseâ is not guaranteed either; it contains packages that come only with 9 months of support too.
Some corporations (esp. those who audit software before using it for security concerns) wonât use âuniverseâ packages, because it doesnât come with the guarantees of âmainâ repository packages (ie. packages of the five year supported products), but we all need to decide for ourselves, what risk weâre willing to accept, or how âcareless/stupidâ users we support maybe⌠but for some corporations that trust (of their users) doesnât appear very high.
Donât forget our Ubuntu tools include some commands where we can explore the security status for our current install (ubuntu-support-status on older releases; ubuntu-security-status on modern releases)
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@ArrayBolt3
Thanks very much with the all details in your reply and also for Lubuntu team making that great distro.
@Fritz
â. I am wondering why people keep asking about backports of this product. As I recall it, and what I experience many years already, Lubuntu is all about stability, based on a modern (and safe) OS, which allows you to run modern (and safe) applicationsâ
Have users not want upgrade simply because have an OS working fine and not wait try upgrade to âavoidâ any incompatible problems.
@guiverc
Thanks for all help.
If is released an Ubuntu ISO update in each 6 months in logic âwill be released another 20.04 in 2023-03â ? If yes not will be released another Lubuntu 20.04 version ?
Only trying understand the schedule releases.
Have an nice day.
Ubuntu focal fossa or 20.04âs release schedule can be seen here which has one release only marked ahead of it, the 20.04.5 release scheduled for 1st September 2022.
We are currently QA testing that currently; our status can be read on this page
Only releases up to .5 are ever planned for a LTS release.
For the last few (including 14.04, 16.04, & 18.04) youâll note there were more than that, with flavors involved if the release occurred before the three years was up, and the flavors individually choose to be included, as no commitment is required beyond the .5 for a LTS flavor.
FYI as example: If you had reason to re-install Lubuntu 18.04 LTS, but your updated uEFI box would not boot any Lubuntu media due to applied boothole fixes meaning you needed 18.04.6 media; youâd need to use one of the Ubuntu 18.04.6 media to do the install; as no Ubuntu flavor provided media with that fix included; as all flavors were already EOL, then add the lubuntu-desktop (or whatever flavor desktop you wanted)
Iâve mentioned it already a few times, in earlier posts: âChapeau⌠(hats off)â for the Lubuntu team.
But you need to wonder if it really necessary or useful (for a small brand like Lubuntu) to follow suit with what the big brother is doing. I mean, providing support for so many years.
I certainly donât know, and perhaps even the Lubuntu team does not know what the âinstalled baseâ of Lubuntu is. Giving it a wild guess, mainly computer enthusiasts with older hardware, and./or with some negative sentiment towards other computer systems available in the market place.
I doubt if there is a corporate market for Lubuntu. I also doubt if there is a serious market in the housewife-category (I donât mean this in a pejorative sense). So, who are the clients, and what are they expecting?
In todayâs world, three or even five years support is a very long period. Especially since the âproductâ is free. There are no migration fees (or penalties). There is no need to extend the life of installed OSâes artificially, as is the case with paid products. The Linux, or in a smaller context the Ubuntu, or even Lubuntu âcornerâ of the desktop realm does not require such a long life. In the corporate world all data is stored on SAN or NAS, or some cloud. Even for privately used PCâs the trend is that data is no longer stored locally.
So why should a small team of enthusiasts (the Lubuntu team) spend so much time and effort for keeping older releases up to date (which is almost a Herculean task)?
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Well, âsupportâ means several things. It means that if a bug crops up, we try to fix it (and succeed a lot of times). It means that if you blow your system up somehow, or canât figure out how to make it do something (or canât figure out why itâs doing something), you can ask for help. It means that if lightning strikes and a security vulnerability manages to hit one of the packages unique to a flavor, and we learn about it, someone will patch it (at least we had better!). All of these things are things that you canât really go without if you want an OS to succeed. And we sorta want our OS to succeed - thatâs why we made it in the first place. Keeping older releases supported for some time means that people wonât be forced to do a tricky and potentially dangerous upgrade in a hurry unless they choose to (by installing a non-LTS version of Lubuntu), but instead they can build up to it, delay it if they have to, and stick with what still works for them if they find out that the newer version doesnât work on their hardware anymore. (Hopefully we or Canonical will manage to fix whatever bug is causing their hardware to not work by the time that they have to upgrade! Regressions (bugs that cause stuff that used to work to stop working) are among the highest-priority bugs in the Ubuntu world.)
Also, why do we do it, personally? Well why do some people whittle wood into art? Why are there YouTubers obsessed with making gadgets out of Legos? Why do you do any of the hobbies or wield any of the skills you have? Because itâs what you enjoy doing. Not only is Lubuntu an enjoyable hobby to build and incredibly useful for work, itâs also something that helps us benefit those around us (and even those far from us). Some people whittle. Some people build with Legos. We build with keystrokes and computing power.
But Lubuntu isnât just a hobby. Itâs a responsibility. People depend on our work to keep their computers working. Some of those people may depend on that computer to work as part of how they stay alive, or for some important area of their lives. We canât just tell people, âHey, hereâs this thing I made, if it goes wrong, youâre on your own, good luck.â We want people to enjoy using Lubuntu. We want people to be able to rely on it.
Like I said earlier, we all love doing what weâre doing (at least I know I love what Iâm doing). If we didnât, weâd go do something else. If weâre going to do it at all, weâre going to do it right. So far we have a solid team of people making sure it gets done right, and having the time of our lives doing it (at least it sure looks that way to me). We will continue to support, develop, fix, and assist users with Lubuntu, for free, not because weâre forced to, but because we want to. And weâre not going to do it halfheartedly and leave people with a product that is simply interesting at best and dangerous at worst. Weâre going to make it good.
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I canât emphasize enough how much I appreciate your work (from you, and the others from the Lubuntu team). There is no negativity intended in my âstone in the pondâ-remarks.
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