Support for Ubuntu 12.10 Officially Ends

Announced today, Ubuntu 12.10 aka Quantal Qwetzal and the official variants xubuntu, lubuntu, edubuntu are officially end-of-support 16 May 2014.

Ubuntu 12.10 is no longer supported as of May 16, 2014. Canonical advises that those still running it upgrade to Ubuntu 14.04 (via Ubuntu 13.10).

Changes to the way releases are supported made after the Quetzal was released means its successor, Ubuntu 13.04, has already reached ‘end of life’.

Current

Version	Code name	Docs	Release date	End of life date
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS	Trusty Tahr	Rel	April 17, 2014	April 2019
Ubuntu 13.10	Saucy Salamander	Rel	October 17, 2013	July 2014
Ubuntu 12.10	Quantal Quetzal	Tech / Rel	October 18, 2012	May 16, 2014
Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS	Precise Pangolin	Changes	February 6, 2014	April 2017
Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS	Precise Pangolin	Changes	August 23, 2013
Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS	Precise Pangolin	Changes	February 14, 2013
Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS	Precise Pangolin	Changes	August 24, 2012
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS	Precise Pangolin	Tech / Rel	April 26, 2012
Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS	Lucid Lynx	Changes	February 16, 2012	May 9, 2013 (Desktop) April 2015 (Server)
Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS	Lucid Lynx	Changes	July 21, 2011
Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS	Lucid Lynx	Changes	February 18, 2011
Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS	Lucid Lynx	Changes	August 17, 2010
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS	Lucid Lynx	Tech / Rel	April 29, 2010

for more

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.You can get goo idea about how long will Ubuntu releases supported from here.