Canonical announces free Ubuntu Pro with a limit of five machines

Canonical announces free Ubuntu Pro with a limit of five machines

Canonical has just announced the extension of the Ubuntu Pro plan , which from now on is available to all users of the distribution completely free of charge, with a limit of five machines. Sea is, therefore, a new measure aimed at professionals and small businesses, but from which everyone can take advantage.

Why this announcement is very good news is understood by the very meaning of Ubuntu Pro, a plan that is part of the Ubuntu Advantage business support package , but to which users and companies can subscribe independently of it. How are they different from each other? In that the one, Ubuntu Advantage, includes the entire commercial offer of Canonical, including technical assistance, access to specific tools and others, while Ubuntu Pro is reduced to the extension of system support.

Specifically, Ubuntu Pro is the extension of support for each LTS version of Ubuntu, from 5 to 10 years . If the 5 years of support for each LTS version of Ubuntu were available to everyone, the additional 5 years provided by the Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) have been paid for, first as an exclusive part of the Ubuntu Advantage package and from one year to this part in the form of Ubuntu Pro, a name that already existed, but in more specific contexts, such as cloud services.

Now, Ubuntu Pro not only involves maintaining the system of the LTS versions for an additional five years, but it does so in a big way, including in its support both the around 2,300 packages that make up the main repository of the distribution, like the more than 23,000 packages in the Universe repository , so we are not talking about minimal maintenance, quite the opposite, more valuable on the server side than on the desktop, but surely welcome on both.

The news now is that Ubuntu Pro is free for all with a limit of five machines , a news that will cheer many for its reach, both for those who depend on Ubuntu installations on servers and workstations.

“Since we first released Ubuntu LTS, with five years of free core operating system support, our enterprise customers have increasingly asked us to cover the broader open source landscape under private commercial agreements. Today, we’re excited to offer the benefits of all that work, for free, to anyone in the world, with a free Ubuntu Pro personal subscription,” said Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical.

It should be noted in this regard that ESM support was implemented as of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, but within the Ubuntu Advantage package; speaking only of Ubuntu Pro, it did the same as of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS . Also not to be confused with the Livepatch hot kernel patching service, another Ubuntu Advantage add-on that cannot be purchased separately, but is also free for up to a certain number of computers.

As for Ubuntu Pro, the subscription process is done in the same way as with Livepatch, through the Ubuntu One account. For more than five machines there is a 30-day free trial, while its price is $25 per year per station of work or 500 dollars per year per server. All the details of the service, in the official page of Ubuntu Pro .

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