I have several distribution versions on various platforms and I notice that Noble is starting to push Oracular. My understanding is that Noble will outlive (and/or be supported longer than) Oracular as Noble is LTS. Is this correct? I do plan on upgrading the Noble system to Plucky if/when Plucky is ready for the laptop (I’ll assess this via a persistent distro). But, I’m wondering if I should upgrade it to Oracular first? I have Noble on an old Dell 3542 laptop, working great under Noble. Anyway, I think my question is mainly about LTS vs interim distros and/or whether there’s a rationale for (or approach to) choosing one vs the other.
Yes, this is correct. LTS versions like Noble are supported for three years, interim versions like Oracular for nine months.
Further, you can upgrade a LTS version to the very next interim version or to the next LTS version, e.g. 24.04 LTS can be upgraded to 26.04 LTS or to 24.10.
Hence, upgrading to 25.04 (Plucky) from 24.04 LTS (Noble) is possible only with upgrading to 24.10 (Oracular) at first.
There are several articles about whether to prefer LTS or interim versions, for instance this one.
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The Ubuntu Release Upgrader tools that Ubuntu Server/Desktop and flavors like Lubuntu, use to upgrade will currently only support an upgrade from 24.04 to 24.10.
As @Wolf314 suggests, it will (in the future) allow an upgrade to 26.04, but that will only open after the release of 26.04.1.
When Ubuntu 24.10 reaches END OF LIFE (on or after 10 July 2025), the Ubuntu release upgrader tool I mention WILL ALLOW an upgrade from the LTS to the next release in the next cycle (24.10 until it’s EOL) but will be 25.04 (plucky) at that point.
Result is an release-upgrade from 24.04 to 25.04 direct will be possible, and whilst fully CI-tested, that process gets almost no QA-testing as QA concentrates on the LTS to LTS, OR through every release (ie. 24.04 → 24.10 → 25.04) path.
Ubuntu plucky will released as Ubuntu 25.04 in 2025-April; however the upgrade from 24.04 to 25.04 direct won’t open whilst 24.10 is supported.
The LTS path is chosen by those who don’t want to release-upgrade as often; as that path has you performing the upgrade only every 2-3 years.
The non-LTS path is for those that are happy with release-upgrades every 6-9 months, or always want the latest software on their systems.
Both are considered stable, however it is true that far less risk is taken on an LTS release (Ubuntu devs do try things in the interim cycles; that if didn’t work out, can be removed for the next release)
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