For while apt upgrades have greeted me with “Get more security updates through Ubuntu Pro with ‘esm-apps’ enabled” and then a list of packages that apparently have updates I’m not going to receive through the regular channel.
Is this just terrible wording, or is it actually that Canonical are holding back security updates for packages in order to promote their pro offering (that I’m 100% never subscribing to as a result)? The packages are indeed installed, and not listed for upgrade via apt upgrade or apt dist-upgrade.
Ubuntu has the best out of the box support for my hardware, so I really don’t want to go back to Debian on this machine for technical reasons, but I may have to weigh my laziness against my philosophical discontent here I guess.
They give extended support after a Ubuntu version is EOL if you’re a subscriber. By the way there’s a free version of the subscription for personal use up to 5 devices I think, maybe more maybe less.
For reference, this is on U22.04 LTS, so still a current version of Ubuntu.
I could understand pushing it if I was EOL, give me a message going “you don’t get updated packages because your version is EOL, but if you were an Ubuntu Pro member you’d get xyz”, but not in the situation where I’m using a valid and current release. It’s the gatekeeping security patches that i take issue with - one of the packages in the list was imagemagick, so iirc that’s open source too.
Yeah, handy, and I would be under the 5 device limit, however I’m more likely build a new PC and focus harder on Linux compatibility, and then go back to Debian tbh. I get that it’s a hard line to walk trying to be commercially viable and provide a free OS, but every time I venture back into the ecosystem I last maybe 6 months before something happens that I take issue with and leave again. Canonical strikes me as the type of company that would go full MS/Apple/Google if they were in the position to do so.