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Accepted
Martin Owens -doctormo-
Asked: 2011-07-29 19:57:25 +0800 CST

How can I programatically determine which Ubuntu Versions are still supported?

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I was writing a script and needed a list of all currently supported versions of Ubuntu.

If any of you guys know of either a downloadable files which contains all versions with dates or a simple list of all currently supported versions. That would be great. Obviously they would have to be locations where Canonical keeps them up to date so the scripts continue to work into the future.

And it should be something which works on older versions of Ubuntu, say any supported version (lucid+) etc.

package-management

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You can use launchpadlib to do this. For example, in python:

    #!/usr/bin/env python

from launchpadlib.launchpad import Launchpad

lp = Launchpad.login_anonymously('series-support-check')
for series in lp.projects['ubuntu'].series:
    print series.name, series.supported

    For more info about the launchpad API, check out the web services API help or the API reference.

    • 11

  2. You can use the parse the output from ubuntu-support-status. That will list what software is unsupported, and how long the others are supported. For instance, LAMP services are supported for 5 years on an LTS desktop even if the desktop itself is only supported for three years. That command will reflect that. It will also show you that packages from universe, multiverse, etc, are not supported at all.

    Here's an example:

    you@ubuntu:~$ ubuntu-support-status
Support status summary of 'ubuntu':

You have 1873 packages (89.5%) supported until October 2014 (18m)

You have 14 packages (0.7%) that can not/no-longer be downloaded
You have 206 packages (9.8%) that are unsupported

Run with --show-unsupported, --show-supported or --show-all to see more details
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  3. To place all supported names in a list instead of printing them:

    from launchpadlib.launchpad import Launchpad

launchpad = Launchpad.login_anonymously('series-support-check')
names = [ s.name for s in launchpad.distributions["ubuntu"].series if s.active ]
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  4. It is not hard to see the pattern in release dates. If you go to Wikipedia, you can see that the normal releases are supported for 1 1/2 years, while the LTS (Long Term Support, released in April of every other year) are supported for 3 years. As there is a release every 6 months (in April and October) it is easy to build a script from that information.

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