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Comment by dgfitz | Hacker News Reader

I cannot update the OS per the contract.

It’s Ubuntu’s problem because they decide they’re smarter than their users and nuke their repos.

Fuck all of that.

It's well publicized that they don't maintain support for old, non-LTS distros. They literally delivered what they promised. Could have been avoided by using an LTS distro.

Fedora does the same. No corporate vendor supports 6 month cycle distros for more than a year. RHEL releases come super slowly, for example.

I didn’t have a say in the matter of OS choice, it doesn’t matter how well-publicized Ubuntu’s stance is, it’s wrong. I don’t care if it’s not an LTS, keep the fucking repos open and advertise you’re using an insecure OS. Let me, the user, make that choice. Don’t pretend I’m stupid and need some kind of benevolent dictator to make choices for me, or handicap me because they’re smarter than me. They’re not.

That’s exactly how it works. If you want to use an unsupported, insecure OS, you just have to opt into it.

You opt into it by changing your repositories to the https://old-releases.ubuntu.com archive mirror. You can install and use Ubuntu 6.10 if you want.

"Keeping the repos open" has a cost on their part. Servers aren't free. If you think you're smart then mirror your own repos.

Really? How much more can it cost to host their LTS and non LTS repos open at the same time?

C’mon, that’s such a weak argument I think you know it.

If there's no cost in time, effort or equipment then mirror it yourself. It's easy, right?

Or just use an LTS distro like literally every single other organization that depends on Ubuntu for their business SMH. Like, it's absurd to even think about...

You ignored the premise. I can’t update. Shake you head, I didn’t make the call, canonical did.

Anyhow someone else showed they do indeed host old repos, just in a different place. Also, why can't you update? Who the hell made that contract? And is it the client the said you can't update or Canonical? Because the latter seems sus...

I can see that you’re now realizing, I didn’t have a say in the constraints. I also hate said constraints. Hand I was dealt.

Ubuntu is a cancer on the gnu/linux/open source community.

I get your frustration but this is really a problem of the vendor. We had something similar about 3 years ago, where a vendor delivered a proprietary driver for a piece of hardware that only worked with a specific 2.6 Linux kernel version--making it at least six years old. Is this the Linux project's fault? I don't think so.

The vendor should provide you with updates to the new version, or use LTS. There's absolutely nothing here bad on the Ubuntu part.

Your contract is with the vendor if you have one. Unless you have a contract with Canonical and then you can ask them for support.

Oh, you got that bit of fun... That's not an apt problem, that's a Ubuntu problem (and it's a reason I encourage people to either stick to LTS if they must use Ubuntu, or just run Debian or and other distro which doesn't block upgrades).

Sounds made up.

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