This release of Ubuntu and the previous one have both been quite interesting. Last one was was an LTS, or long term support, release which was widely criticized for adding too many new features and potentially unstable programs. This one, on the other hand, was not an LTS release, but was considered to be a relatively minor revision.

Today, a post here outlines the technical meaning of an LTS. Basically, LTSs are supported with updates for longer. Apparently, this is all an LTS means, but it seems to me that it should be more.

LTS releases are intended to be the rock solid releases for enterprises who don’t like the 6 month release cycle. I think this should mean that the main focus should be on stabilizing existng software and adding only a few new minor features. Non-LTS releases, on the other hand, should push the bleeding edge. This could be a great system to keep those who want slow, steady evolution and those who want rapid updates happy at the same time, but has not been how it worked.

In these past releases, things have been almost completely reversed. The past LTS release included two pieces of beta software and the non-LTS included fairly little in the way of unstable software.

Even if this is not the way that the Ubuntu developers and Canonical decide to define things, it seems like they should come out and explain what the real difference is with LTS releases, if there is anything other than longer support.