“Long-Term Support” doesn’t mean what you think

Summary

My last post about good beginner-friendly KDE-focused operating systems sparked some discussions about the concept of “Long-Term Support” (LTS) releases. But what does this term mean? It’s a bit generic-sounding, making it easy to interpret as meaning almost anything. So let’s go to the source: how the term is defined by the operating systems using it! Here are the non-commercial ones: Debian Stable says: Security updates are provided by Debian security team for three years. This generally means that each stable release is supported for its whole life plus an extra year (or so) after a new version of stable is released. In addition, further security support is provided by the LTS and LTS/Extended projects. Ubuntu says: LTS stands for long-term support — which means five years of free security and maintenance updates Kubuntu says: The latest Long Term Support (LTS) version of the Kubuntu operating system for desktop PCs and laptops, Kubuntu 26.04 [is] supported with security and maintenance updates, until April 2029. (I didn’t include openSUSE Leap because its marketing material doesn’t use this term, though what it offers is fairly similar in practice) So these operating systems are fairly consistent about what “Long-Term Support” means to them: Each discrete OS release will continue receiving updates for a certain number of years. Those updates will include fixes for security issues. Those updates may include whatever “maintenance” means; Ubuntu & Kubuntu promise this, Debian doesn’t say. Those updates will not include any new features, UI improvements, or other non-bug-fix releases from the software’s developers. That is to say, each piece of software is effectively locked to a specific version for the life of the release. That’s it! So let’s look at what’s NOT promised: Lack of bugs Lack of crashes Fixes for non-security issues Personal support for issues you encounter Support for newer hardware devices (Ubuntu offers “hardware enablement” kernels for desktop ins...