From the
‘
The Circle of Life
‘
files:
The Ubuntu 8.10 Linux distribution, code named the Intrepid Ibex will reach its end-of-life on April 30th.
The Intrepid release reaches the end after 18 months of life which began in October of 2008. The end of Intrepid in the same week that next big Ubuntu release – the Lucid Lynx is set for release. Unlike Interpid which was a regular release, the upcoming Lucid release is an LTS (Long Term Support) release and will have three years of support on the desktop and five on the server.
While I expect that some Intrepid users might decide to move to Lucid, I suspect that many of them have long since moved to a new release like the 8.10, 9.04 and 9.10 releases. If an Interpid user has moved it’s a multi-step process at this point.
“Note that upgrades to version 9.10 and beyond are only supported in multiple steps, via an upgrade first to 9.04, then to 9.10,” Ubuntu developer Steve Langasek wrote in a mailing list posting. “Both Ubuntu 9.04 and Ubuntu 9.10 continue to be actively supported with security updates and select high-impact bug fix.”
With regularly scheduled update cycles, Ubuntu has made it predictable for users to figure out when new releases are coming and when old ones expire. Sounds like a common sense enough idea, but don’t forget, that wasn’t always the case with Debian which is the root from which Ubuntu has grown.