Can You Trust Claims of "Long Term Support" in Distro Releases?

[sphen]

I have been playing with various popular distros in virtual machines to see the differences for myself. I have also seen frequent announcements of new distros and updates for distros I have not heard of before. It's like Oprah giving away a different distro free to every member of the audience.

Some of these distro announcements remind me of single person teen hacker summer projects that won't be maintained for long. My question is simple:

-> Are there examples of "Long Term Support" Linux distros where support was abandoned by disillusioned distro developers before the support terms ended?

 

[f33dm3bits]

CentOS8

CentOS Linux is dead—and Red Hat says Stream is “not a replacement”

CentOS Stream, founded in 2019, is “a rolling preview of what's next in RHEL.”

arstechnica.com

 

[dos2unix]

I was about to post the same thing.

What Happened to CentOS and What to Do Next | OpenLogic by Perforce

In this blog, our expert discusses the December 2020 CentOS announcement, and how organizations should be preparing for CentOS 8 EOL.

www.openlogic.com

I guess support for 7 is around for another year or so.

 

[KGIII]

I'm sure some largely-personal projects have been abandoned but only CentOS has abandoned their LTS - though I think they kept 7 as full-length (it has been around for a long time now, almost a decade).

 

[Deleted member 147986]

Are there examples of "Long Term Support" Linux distros where support was abandoned by disillusioned distro developers before the support terms ended?

Not to my knowledge. Most smaller distributions never make it to the stage of making statements like supporting their stuff for 5 years.

Most of the long term support claims come from the usual suspects selling enterprise support to businesses. Those have a vested interest in not losing credibility by not fulfilling their claims. That and legal liability.

For medium sized distributions like Mint I don't see any reason to suspect issues, their monthly blogs show a long list of donations at the end.

 

[kc1di]

I would not doubt Ubuntu, Mint, Or distros base on their LTS releases.

 

[arochester]

Was Microsoft long-term support trustworthy?

 

[KGIII]

Was Microsoft long-term support trustworthy?

I would say yes. They've supported all their OSes for quite a while, with maybe the exception of ME which was only like 6 years. They even extended XP's support beyond the time limit they were initially contracted for.

Given their use in corporate environments, you can be pretty sure they'll support their OSes for as long as they said they would at the time of sale, like 10 years or so lately (as memory serves and not looking it up).

 

[Deleted member 147986]

Was Microsoft long-term support trustworthy?

I've not heard, seen or read anything substantial on Microsoft not fulfilling their contracts. Or any credible complaints about exactly that. So the only answer seems yes.

Your privacy and usability though, have fun needing an account to use your own computer. Love running Linux. My computer, my choices. Don't need the corporate dystopia.

Internet down for 24 hours because of work being done? Linux works fine. Windows requiring you to log in to your online account? Tough luck, no computer for you, even though you paid for it. It's Microsoft's computer, not yours.