Should I proceed with the 1404_HWE_EOL?

Question

I received the End of Life notice for my hardware stack. Usually not a biggie, but digging into it I’ve found multiple posts where upgrading as recommended has broken a working system. And running the hwe-support-status command shows a good amount of unsupported packages on my system.

I also have a Broadcom b43 wireless.

So the questions are:

A) In general what happens with these unsupported packages?

B) In specific, from someone who has a b43 and these unsupported packages, does your system still work after this upgrade?

System: Dell Vostro 1720

Desktop: Trinity

michael@local [~]# alias relub
alias relub='cat /etc/os-release && uname -a'
michael@local [~]# relub
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION="14.04.5 LTS, Trusty Tahr"
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS"
VERSION_ID="14.04"
HOME_URL=""
SUPPORT_URL=""
BUG_REPORT_URL=""
Linux anon 4.2.0-27-generic #32~14.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jan 22 15:32:26 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

michael@local [~]# hwe-support-status --verbose

WARNING: Security updates for your current Hardware Enablement Stack
ended on 2016-08-04:
 * 

There is a graphics stack installed on this system. An upgrade to a
configuration supported for the full lifetime of the LTS will become
available on 2016-07-21 and can be installed by running 'update-manager'
in the Dash.

michael@local [~]# hwe-support-status --show-replacements
libgl1-mesa-glx-lts-xenial linux-image-generic-lts-xenial libgl1-mesa-glx-lts-xenial:i386 xserver-xorg-lts-xenial libwayland-egl1-mesa-lts-xenial linux-generic-lts-xenial

michael@local [~]# hwe-support-status --show-all-unsupported
linux-headers-generic-lts-wily xserver-xorg-video-ati-lts-wily
linux-image-4.2.0-27-generic xserver-xorg-input-all-lts-wily
xserver-xorg-input-mouse-lts-wily linux-generic-lts-wily
xserver-xorg-video-nouveau-lts-wily
xserver-xorg-video-trident-lts-wily libglapi-mesa-lts-wily
xserver-xorg-video-savage-lts-wily libglapi-mesa-lts-wily:i386
linux-image-generic-lts-wily xserver-xorg-input-evdev-lts-wily
libgles2-mesa-lts-wily xserver-xorg-video-vesa-lts-wily
xserver-xorg-lts-wily xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion-lts-wily
linux-image-extra-4.2.0-27-generic libwayland-egl1-mesa-lts-wily
xserver-xorg-video-intel-lts-wily libgbm1-lts-wily
xserver-xorg-video-cirrus-lts-wily xserver-xorg-video-qxl-lts-wily
xserver-xorg-video-mga-lts-wily xserver-xorg-core-lts-wily
xserver-xorg-input-synaptics-lts-wily xserver-xorg-video-all-lts-wily
xserver-xorg-video-mach64-lts-wily xserver-xorg-video-vmware-lts-wily
xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse-lts-wily
xserver-xorg-video-neomagic-lts-wily
xserver-xorg-video-fbdev-lts-wily libgl1-mesa-glx-lts-wily
libxatracker2-lts-wily xserver-xorg-video-tdfx-lts-wily
libegl1-mesa-lts-wily xserver-xorg-video-radeon-lts-wily
libgl1-mesa-glx-lts-wily:i386 libgl1-mesa-dri-lts-wily
libgles1-mesa-lts-wily xserver-xorg-input-wacom-lts-wily
xserver-xorg-video-openchrome-lts-wily libgl1-mesa-dri-lts-wily:i386
xserver-xorg-video-r128-lts-wily xserver-xorg-video-sisusb-lts-wily

Ref:

[Note: all links removed, I don’t have the rep to post them]

Answer 1

First a few words about hwe-support-status (according to its source code):

• --show-all-unsupported shows all HWE packages that are installed on your system and that are not supported by Canonical anymore. In your case, this means all packages with names ending in -lts-wily, and the various Linux 4.2 packages.
• --show-replacements shows HWE meta-packages that should be installed to replace the unsupported ones. In the present case, this means various -lts-xenial packages, and Linux 4.4.

The -lts-xenial packages have dependency data (Conflicts and Replaces) that are designed to automatically remove the -lts-wily packages when they are installed.

Note that the proposed replacements are meta-packages. These are small packages that depend on a bigger list of related packages. This way, installing one meta-package (linux-generic-lts-xenial or xserver-xorg-lts-xenial for example) will install "everything" related. This is why the replacements list is much smaller that the unsupported list.

Now, to answer your questions:

A) The unsupported packages (from Ubuntu Wily) will be replaced by supported packages (from Ubuntu Xenial). Note that a few packages may not exist anymore in Xenial, and be simply removed (in particular: the AMD/ATI fglrx drivers, but you have an NVIDIA chip, so this does not concern you).

B) Support for Broadcom b43 is a kernel matter. If you did not need to perform a specific setup for Linux 4.2, then I guess it should still work for Linux 4.4. A quick Google search did not reveal anything particularly wrong with b43 and Linux 4.4. Note that b43 is a generic name shared by many Broadcom chips. You may want to investigate which chip you have precisely, and check if there are issues under Linux 4.4.