Canonical has recently announced a significant change to the LTS releases of Ubuntu, extending the update period to a duration of 15 years. This extension will impact all current LTS releases, starting from Ubuntu 14.04. Consequently, support for Ubuntu 14.04 has now been prolonged until April 2029, with updates for subsequent versions such as Ubuntu 24.04 being guaranteed until 2039. Following suit, Ubuntu 22.04 will receive updates until 2037, Ubuntu 20.04 until 2035, and so forth. It is important to note that public updates will be available for 5 years after the initial release, while the remaining 10 years of fixes will be exclusively accessible to users of the Ubuntu Pro service.
The Ubuntu Pro service is tailored towards commercial applications and requires payment. However, for personal use, individuals have the option to register for Ubuntu Pro for free, allowing them to receive extended updates for up to 5 machines. Furthermore, members of the Ubuntu Community are entitled to complimentary extended updates for 50 machines.
Comparatively, other distributions have different maintenance periods in place. For instance, Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers a 14-year support window (10 years + 4 additional years of paid service), while SUSE Linux boasts a 16-year maintenance period. Debian GNU/Linux provides 10 years of support (5 years LTS + 5 years Extended LTS), openSUSE offers 2-year support, and Fedora Linux only guarantees updates for 13 months. More information regarding support durations for various distributions can be found at the respective links for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux, Debian GNU/Linux, openSUSE, and Fedora Linux.