Does 12.04 LXDE have LTS?

Question

This question sparked my question.

Will my PC receive the Long Term Support (LTS) using LXDE in Ubuntu 12.04?

What does it mean that Lubuntu doesn't have long term support? Does it just mean it's not explicitly tested with new hardware and doesn't get point releases? Or does it mean that LXDE packages don't get the same kind of community support as community-supported packages that more commonly appear in Ubuntu installations?

Answer 1

No, but also yes. You will receive 5 years support on packages Ubuntu provides support for this term.

Lubuntu shares packages with Ubuntu in a sense that "underlying" "base" software like Alsa, the kernel, common shared libraries and such are from the same archive and maintained by the same people. Lubuntu is nothing more than Ubuntu with another set of preselected set of packages. It's just that Unity comes with 5 years of support and LXDE doesn't, in Ubuntu.

For the example of the kernel, Unity and LXDE core, run this on Lubuntu 12.04 or Ubuntu 12.04 (won't make a difference):

$ apt-cache show linux-image-generic | grep ^Supported
Supported: 5y

$ apt-cache show unity | grep ^Supported
Supported: 5y

$ apt-cache show lxde-core | grep ^Supported
<no output>

This way, you can check for every package whether it comes with the 5 years of support or not.

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So, this makes me disagree with the other answer stating

Also, please note that if you are using Lubuntu, instead of Ubuntu, you will not receive LTS since Lubuntu 12.04 isn't an LTS release.

Because, regardless of how you installed Lubuntu¹, you will receive updates for 5 years, yet not for all of your packages (including LXDE).

¹ _{You can install Lubuntu in two ways. 1) Install regular Ubuntu first, replacing Unity with LXDE via lubunu-desktop, or 2) using the Lubunu Live CD/installer directly.}

Answer 2

Yes. You will still receive security updates for your Ubuntu machine if you are using Long Term Support (LTS). However, not all applications will receive security updates since the LTS designation only applies to certain parts of the Ubuntu Archive.

Also, please note that if you are using Lubuntu, instead of Ubuntu, you will not receive LTS since Lubuntu 12.04 isn't an LTS release.

Examples of applications that may receive security updates are those which are supported by the Ubuntu Team or Canonical such as Ubuntu One or Firefox.

Source: An explanation of LTS in the Ubuntu Wiki

Answer 3

If you don't want a bloatware of packages and software on your machine, just install Lubuntu 12.04, but again it's not LTS. To get this "LTS" version of Lubuntu, you have to install Ubuntu 12.04 and then open the terminal and install:

sudo apt-get install lubuntu-desktop

But again, you still have a bloatware of packages that came with Unity and Ubuntu-desktop and you need to purge a lot of stuff to get pure Lubuntu desktop and you should be careful when doing this. And another thing is, you gonna using unity greeter lightdm instead of the lubuntu lightdm version.