Ubuntu 16.04 LTS safety beef up has ended – except you pay

When you’re nonetheless working Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), heads up: Prolonged Safety Repairs (ESM) ended this month and your gadget is not receiving safety updates.

Having debuted in April 2016, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS won 5 years of usual beef up with an extra 5 years of safety protection to be had thru ESM through enabling Ubuntu Professional. ESM for 16.04 ended April 2026, that means motion is had to keep secure.

The simplest factor to do is to improve to a more moderen LTS unencumber – however there’s no direct path from 16.04, on the other hand. As an alternative, you’ll wish to improve in levels: 16.04 to 18.04, then 18.04 to twenty.04, then 20.04 to 22.04, then 22.04 to 24.04.

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS can be to be had as an improve from 24.04 in August 2026.

However for enterprises and companies who can’t improve to a more moderen unencumber (because of {hardware} compatibility, regulatory or mission-critical uptime causes) Canonical supply a Legacy apps add-on thru Ubuntu Professional.

This extends the Xenial Xerus‘ beef up window with 5 extra years of safety updates for binary programs in primaryand universe and important patches for programs like MySQL and NGINX till April 2031, making for 15 years of beef up in general.

However the Legacy add-on isn’t unfastened. No longer for house customers on non-public gadgets, and no longer even for many who already paying for his or her Ubuntu Professional subscription. Legacy ESM prices additional to get right of entry to and with out it, not more safety updates are coming.

Customers can take a look at their Ubuntu Professional entitlement through working sudo professional standing --all and, if ready to, allow the legacy add-ons the usage of sudo professional allow esm-infra-legacy esm-apps-legacy. For me, it says no entitlement as a result of I’m really not entitled.

For companies, no ongoing protection is dangerous. For house customers keeping up a decade-old Ubuntu set up on an historical netbook that’s booted up every so often for a travel down nostalgia alley, the lack of safety protection it extra one thing to bear in mind, than lose sleep over.