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I have an old computer, which runs Ubutu 10.04 LTS. There were numerous problems with drivers when trying 12.04, so I rolled back to 10.04, and am scared now to try something new as not to ruin the whole system. Besides, I dislike the whole Unity thing.

The computer is not usually connected to the itnernet, so security patches are not a big issue.

What is bugging me, however, is that software in the repositories is ancient. And while backporting security patches to the kernel might be cumbersome, setting up a build server for the newest version of most programs should be straightforward and cost no more than $1000 (mostly for HDD-s) in hardware, one time.

Why is recent software not available for Ubuntu 10.04? Are there non-standard repositories, taht do this?

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  • Do you have a specific problem to solve? 10.04 is End of Life(EOL) and we generally don't provide support for that. Sep 17, 2013 at 9:31
  • @Kevin Bowen, yes. (1) Is there some unofficial repository of software builds? (2) If not, any advice on how to handle ancient hardware that most parts of are not supported (at least out of the box) in 12.04?
    – Vorac
    Sep 17, 2013 at 9:36
  • 2
    help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuBackports is all you get :)
    – Rinzwind
    Sep 17, 2013 at 9:40

3 Answers 3

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Why are old distributions not partially supported indeffinetely if this is very inexpensive?

They are but it is not inexpensive. Just 1 simple thing like dependencies is going to be a nightmare.

Why is recent software not available for Ubuntu 10.04?

Because it would require people from Canonical to spent time on an old release where they are needed to help with the newer versions and most will rather make new stuff. So this is done on a requested amount of programs. That system is called "backports".

Backports:

What are Backports

When Ubuntu releases a new version of its OS every 6 months, that release is largely frozen in time. While the software that is part of that release will get bug fixes and security patches, new major releases of software and the new features that come with them will not be available.

That’s where Ubuntu Backports comes in. Backports offers a way to selectively provide newer versions of software for older Ubuntu releases. Most commonly, the Backports team will provide new versions of standalone applications which can be safely updated without impacting the rest of the system.

Security Support for Backports

Unlike the packages released with Ubuntu, Backports do not come with any security support guarantee. The Ubuntu Security Team does not update packages in Backports. When a package which has been backported receives a security update, the Ubuntu Backporters will make a best-effort attempt to update the backport.

But... backports need to be requested.

Requesting a Backport

Backports must be approved by the Ubuntu Backporters team, but anybody can request a backport. As backports require testing before they can be approved, the backports team recommends that requesters of backports also test them when possible.

Backports are requested by filing a bug against the appropriate backports project, as listed here. The Ubuntu Backporters team recommends using the requestbackport tool in the ubuntu-dev-tools package to file backport requests. This tool is aware of many conventions for backports and can walk you through most of the verification steps.

During the initial evaluation, the backports team will evaluate the request against the following criteria:

  • Validity of the Backport
  • Package Availability
  • Source Packages Only
  • Ensuring a Safe Upgrade Path

From comment:

If not, any advice on how to handle ancient hardware that most parts of are not supported (at least out of the box) in 12.04.

If that is the case: it is a regression and those are -bugs- and should be treated as such. Any Ubuntu release should include all hardware support available in any previous releases + bug fixes found for this release.

And a final note:

Nothing can stop you from making your own backport packages. All you need is a launchpad account and on your systems the following packages sudo apt-get install ubuntu-dev-tools gnupg-agent. On how to continue see ...

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But it isn't cheap to support old software...

A build server is not just a processor and storage. It has to live somewhere, ideally a data centre, honking up a load of power. Then there are the people to look after that server. We're talking thousands a year just to run your build platform.

And this software lives in a stack. Kernels, versions of X and desktop components. These components have changed pretty widely between 10.04 and 12.04 (and will even more by 14.04). Given that developers tend to target "the latest LTS", backporting changes gets harder and harder every time. You call it cumbersome, I call it multiple hours developer and tester time per backport. That time isn't cheap.

A support schedule exists and explains what it means by "support". What you're asking for is well outside that schedule both in longevity and expectation. If you want to keep running on an old and now unsupported platform, you're free to. You can either run unmaintained software indefinitely at your own risk or you can bear these "cheap" costs yourself. Set up your own repository and build server and pull in all the latest packages of the things you want. It's all out there and you're free to do it. Should be simple, right? Right?

No. It's not a Sunday afternoon project. Really the only sustainable option is to get onto a platform and make your peace with it. 12.04 is supported until 2017 (with hardware enablement stacks available to modernise it further) so I would suggest you upgrade and get your problems fixed.

  • Driver issues are usually transitive (especially if it was working in an older kernel). You should be reporting regressions as bugs and helping the developers help you.
  • UI issues like "I don't like Unity" are simply side-stepped by not using them. The desktop is very modular. Compatibility versions of Gnome 2 (Cinnamon, mate, gnome-fallback, etc) exist and other desktops (XFCE, KDE, Gnome 3) are also out there vying for your attention.
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If you want newer versions of all packages, then why not get the latest release: 13.04? That is precisely what a new release is: newer versions of all packages.

If, however, you want to keep most packages at their 10.04 versions but upgrade only a select few packages to their newer equivalents, that's not a simple task at all - in fact it is a very difficult task.

The effort required to backport software includes modifying the software to make it compatible with older versions of the libraries it depends on for its build.

In some cases this is not too difficult, because earlier versions of its dependencies might not differ too much.

However, in other cases, an earlier version of a dependency may work quite differently, or may not even have existed. In this case the software either requires quite extensive rewriting to work around the lack of compatibility with its older dependencies, or some of its dependencies will need to be backported too, which can have flow-on dependencies. If you were to carry this to the extreme, you would end up with a system that consists of a large number of packages from later versions anyway (also known as a "mixed system" because it consists of packages that don't all come from the one Ubuntu version).

You could do this a lot more easily just by initiating an upgrade to the latest version of the operating system, which would negate the need to run a mixed system and would require no dependence on backports.

My advice would be to try and sort out whatever problems you're having with the later version of Ubuntu. It will be a lot easier than trying to get support for a much older version.

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