My last post about good beginner-friendly KDE-focused operating systems sparked some discussions about the concept of “Long-Term Support” (LTS) releases.
Thank you very much, Nate. In the community, sometimes we have this habit of using names lightly without trying to understand what actually they mean. The other day, my friend wanted to install “Linux” on his own, and when he searched on Google, the first result pointed him to Linux Mint. He was confused when he discovered it wasn’t the same as what I use, and I was even more confused when I tried to explain it to him in simple terms… from then on, I decided to call them “Linus-based operating systems, colloquially abbreviated as Linux(es)”. Simple terms like LTS, with seemingly clear meanings, still leave a lot of misunderstandings. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much for that. I’ve been a Linux user since RedHat (we all know what happened there). I have to admit I didn’t fully understand the meaning of LTS until a KDE developer explained it to me in a different topic here. I thought LTS would also provide updates to the UI which isn’t the case at all. I think that’s strange but I understand why.
I was a Debian (LTS since that first appeared) user for around 15 (or more) years always on a dedicated machine and never had any issues until Debian 13/KDE Plasma 6. After many hours trying fix things I finally gave up. I don’t blame the dedicated people at Debian for my issues as that’s worked out fine for the majority of people.
Another user suggested I try a live version of something else to see if those issues were resolved. I chose Kubuntu live and those issues were resolved so I installed it and here I am now. The transition was easy as I kept my original partitions let the Calmares installer format all except /home so I could keep everything in my user directory. It’s important beforehand to remove all configuration files in the user directory and to use the same username as before. Since Debian and Kubuntu use the same UID of 1000 this has worked out well. Of course the UID can be changed later if they are not the same. Now I’ll wait and see what happens after the 2 year LTS lifecycle of Kubuntu 26.04.
I’m not really sure what to think about rolling distros. I like the idea of having the latest of absolutely everything, but I hesitate to try that route for reasons you mentioned in your post. I think, for me at least, sticking to an LTS distro that works is a better option for now.
Regards,
Bryan
I misstated the LTS lifecycle of Kubuntu:
Kubuntu Long Term Support (LTS) releases provide 3 years of standard support for Kubuntu-specific packages (like the KDE desktop). However, the core Ubuntu base—which operates under the hood—receives 5 years of standard support (and up to 12 years total via Ubuntu Pro)
I’d like to note that Kubuntu and Ubuntu Pro is free for personal use:
Free, personal subscription for 5 machines for you or any business you own, or 50 machines for active Ubuntu Community members. If you need phone support or need to cover more than 5 machines, please select “My organization”
I can’t imagine why so many people are confused about the meaning of LTS. 