14 DAY TRIAL // Canonical, through Adam Conrad, informed us today that the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) operating system is now officially dead, reaching end of life on April 28, 2017.
If you're still using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on your desktop or server systems, it's time to upgrade to a newer, supported release. You can choose to upgrade to either Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr), which will be supported for two more years, until April 2019, or Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), supported until April 2021.
"This is a follow-up to the End of Life warning sent last month to confirm that as of today (April 28, 2017), Ubuntu 12.04 is no longer generally supported. No more package updates will be accepted to the 12.04 primary archive, and it will be copied for archival to old-releases.ubuntu.com in the coming weeks," said Adam Conrad.
Canonical offers Extended Security Maintenance for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
If you don't want to upgrade to a newer Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support) version because of various reasons, Canonical offers a special, paid program for all Ubuntu Advantage customers called Extended Security Maintenance (ESM), which you can purchase right now for your Ubuntu 12.04 LTS installation.
Canonical's Extended Security Maintenance program kicked off today, April 29, 2017, and will provide important security patches for the kernel and various other essential packages in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin). Through the ESM program, you'll receive these updates for as long as you pay the service.
In case you want to upgrade your Ubuntu 12.04 LTS installation, Canonical explains that you must first upgrade to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and then to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. Detailed instructions are provided at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/TrustyUpgrades and https://help.ubuntu.com/community/XenialUpgrades.
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) was released almost five years ago, on April 26, 2012. It was Ubuntu's fourth LTS release, shipping with the Unity user interface on the desktop and top-notch technologies on the server. It officially reached end of life on Friday, April 28, 2017, and will no longer receive security fixes.