If you’re still running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), heads up: Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) ended this month and your system is no longer receiving security updates.
Having debuted in April 2016, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS received five years of standard support with a further 5 years of security coverage available through ESM by enabling Ubuntu Pro. ESM for 16.04 ended April 2026, meaning action is needed to stay protected.
The most straightforward thing to do is to upgrade to a more recent LTS release – but there’s no direct route from 16.04, however. Instead, you’ll need to upgrade in stages: 16.04 to 18.04, then 18.04 to 20.04, then 20.04 to 22.04, then 22.04 to 24.04.
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS will be available as an upgrade from 24.04 in August 2026.
But for enterprises and businesses who can’t upgrade to a newer release (due to hardware compatibility, regulatory or mission-critical uptime reasons) Canonical provide a Legacy apps add-on through Ubuntu Pro.
This extends the Xenial Xerus‘ support window with 5 more years of security updates for binary packages in mainand universe and critical patches for packages like MySQL and NGINX until April 2031, making for 15 years of support in total.
The Legacy add-on is an entitlement most can’t access
But the Legacy add-on is not free. Not for home users on personal devices, and not even for those who already paying for their Ubuntu Pro subscription. Legacy ESM costs extra to access and without it, no more security updates are coming.
Users can check their Ubuntu Pro entitlement by running sudo pro status --all and, if able to, enable the legacy add-ons using sudo pro enable esm-infra-legacy esm-apps-legacy. For me, it says no entitlement because I am not entitled.
For businesses, no ongoing coverage is risky. For home users maintaining a decade-old Ubuntu install on an ancient netbook that’s booted up once in a while for a trip down nostalgia alley, the loss of security coverage it more something to keep in mind, than lose sleep over.
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