LTS releases

For customers who want to deploy Ubuntu Server in an enterprise environment, Dell recommends that they use an LTS (Long Term Support) release of Ubuntu Server, which is currently v12.04, originally released in April 2012. LTS releases have a support life cycle of 5 years, as opposed to non-LTS releases, which are only supported for 9 months. LTS releases are released every 2 years, which means the next LTS release is scheduled for April 2014 (v14.04).

LTS “point” releases

LTS point releases are follow-up releases to the original 12.04 LTS release. Some of these LTS point releases are based on newer kernels which contain newer drivers and thus are able to support newer hardware. For example, the Ubuntu LTS releases 12.04.0 and 12.04.1 are based on the 3.2 kernel, but the Ubuntu LTS release 12.04.2 is based on the 3.5 kernel.

If you originally installed Ubuntu 12.04.0 or 12.04.1 and then upgrade to 12.04.2 via “apt-get upgrade”, you will NOT be automatically upgraded from the 3.2 kernel to the 3.5 kernel. This is to ensure stability in your environment, since such a kernel upgrade can introduce unwanted instability: in a production environment, you usually only care about bug fixes and security updates.

LTS Hardware Enablement Stack

What if you have Ubuntu 12.04 deployed and want to upgrade to the 3.5 kernel? Say that you have a new hardware device (i.e. network controller) that is not supported with the 3.2 kernel, but it’s enabled with the 3.5 kernel?

To upgrade to the 3.5 kernel, install the following packages:

$ sudo apt-get install linux-generic-lts-quantal xserver-xorg-lts-quantal 

Verify that the new kernel is your default boot kernel, and reboot your machine. As with any other Linux distribution, you always have the option to revert to an earlier kernel by editing your boot loader configuration file.

Note 1: If you originally installed Ubuntu 12.04.2 (released on 2/14/13), then you will already be on the 3.5 kernel. The instructions above are only necessary if you originally installed 12.04.0 or 12.04.1.

Note 2: You don’t usually see the term “12.04.0”, which refers to the first release of 12.04. It is mentioned here only to distinguish it from its follow-on releases.

Useful Links

•  Hardware Enablement Stack: http://bit.ly/13iCRao
• Ubuntu LTS releases: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS.
• Ubuntu releases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ubuntu_releases.