14 DAY TRIAL // Canonical has just announced that Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) will reach End of Life on May 16, 2014, marking the end of yet another Linux distribution in the company's portfolio.
Canonical used to have a support period of 18 months for its distributions, but they changed this policy a while ago, and Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) is the last one to have benefited from this “extended” support.
It's not unusual for Linux developers to provide limited support for the operating systems. With very few exceptions, which are usually confirmed by big names like Red Hat, Canonical, and the Debian project (not a profit-based enterprise), most of the operating systems don't usually last more than two years tops.
There is a number of reasons for this, but the most important is manpower. It's time consuming to have developers churn out security updates and fix problems when they can just work on something else that is way more exciting.
Another reason for the limited support time for the Linux operating systems is the fact that development takes place at an incredible speed. Things change so quickly in open source that developers usually prefer to make a new operating system with some features than to backport them to something that is already two years old.
“Ubuntu announced its 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) release more than 18 months ago, on October 18, 2012. Since changes to the Ubuntu support cycle mean that Ubuntu 13.04 has reached end of life before Ubuntu 12.10, the support cycle for Ubuntu 12.10 has been extended slightly to overlap with the release of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. This will allow users to move directly from Ubuntu 12.10 to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (via Ubuntu 13.10).”
“This period of overlap is now coming to a close, and we will be retiring Ubuntu 12.10 on Friday, May 16, 2014. At that time, Ubuntu Security Notices will no longer include information or updated packages for Ubuntu 12.10,” reads the official announcement.
Normally, users would be advised to upgrade to 13.04 or 13.10, but these are new systems and they only have nine months of support. This means that Ubuntu 13.04 is already EOL and Ubuntu 13.10 will reach the same stage in July.
The best alternative is to upgrade to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, which will be supported until 2019. To be fair, nothing can stop users from running Ubuntu 12.10 from now on, but they just won't receive any security updates past the May 16 date.