Canonical graduates Ubuntu Pro from beta to general availability

Canonical graduates Ubuntu Pro from beta to general availability

Canonical has announced the general availability of Ubuntu Pro, its subscription service aimed at hardening the security of Ubuntu installations. The subscription was launched as a beta in October but now it’s available generally. The main benefit of Ubuntu Pro is that you can extend the support of long-term support (LTS) Ubuntu releases from five years to ten, this is great if you rely on older software not available on newer versions of Ubuntu.

As part of the subscription, Canonical also delivers important updates to an additional 23,000 packages outside of its main operating system. It covers critical, high, and selected medium CVEs for “thousands of applications and toolchains” while remaining compliant with regimes like FedRAMP, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS.

Ubuntu Pro is available for every Ubuntu LTS from 16.04 LTS and can be acquired through various tiers, including a free tier if you want to use it for personal use. While various tiers are available, the standard Ubuntu Pro subscription costs $25 per year for workstation or $500 per year for server, it can be acquired via Canonical and includes a 30-day free trial.

If you want Ubuntu Pro for personal or small-scale commercial use, you can use it on five machines or on 50 machines if you’re an official Ubuntu community member. Just log in to your Ubuntu One account, or create a free account, to get a token that you can use to link your computer. It was reported earlier this week that Ubuntu 18.04 LTS was reaching end of life in a few months but if you use Ubuntu Pro, you can extend the life of this Ubuntu version out to 2028.