Ubuntu LTS releases to 15 years with Legacy add-on

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

The three most prevalent themes in this Hacker News discussion regarding extended OS support are:

1. Value and Relief of Long-Term Stability Over Rapid Churn

Many users strongly appreciate the stability provided by Extended Long-Term Support (LTS) and view the constant need for minor upgrades as exhausting and disruptive "churn."

Supporting Quote: One user expressed frustration with the pace of development: "I love doing stuff that has long term stability written all over it. In fact the IT world moving as fast as it does is one of my major frustrations." ("jacquesm")
Supporting Quote: Another user contrasted the need for updates versus stability: "Stability is a feature too, and a far more important one in my opinion. I'd much rather a stable platform to build upon, than a rickety one that keeps changing shape every other week..." ("laurowyn")
Supporting Quote: Conversely, another user criticized the constant urge to upgrade: "If you are not able to upgrade your stuff every 2 to 3 years, then you will not be able to upgrade your stuff after 5, 10 or 15 years." ("JackSlateur")—a sentiment explicitly denied by others who value security patches over feature updates.

2. The Commercial Justification and Cost of Extended Support

There is significant discussion about why this extended support is offered—specifically, the existence of high-paying enterprise customers willing to fund it, contrasted with the general uncertainty about its cost structure for smaller/personal users.

Supporting Quote: Users recognized that enterprise needs drive this market: "These kinds of demands are becoming more common in b2b software." ("ycombinete")
Supporting Quote: A view on the business rationale for the extension was offered: "If Ubuntu can spread the cost between enough (or large enough) customers, why not?" ("perlgeek")
Supporting Quote: Another user noted confusion over the pricing model for personal users: "This 'Pro' program also being free is a suprise to be sure, but a welcome one." ("superkuh")

3. The Unique Challenges of Maintaining Very Old Codebases

Users expressed both fascination and concern regarding the specialized effort required to maintain extremely aged software versions, particularly concerning security patching and dependency management.

Supporting Quote: The difficulty of the maintenance task itself was acknowledged: "The person having to maintain this must be in a world of hurt. Unless they found someone who really likes doing this kind of thing?" ("nebula8804")
Supporting Quote: Others pointed out that some individuals find value in this niche work: "There are more people like that than one might think... I'm sure there are a number of bearded dudes who would commit themselves to keeping an old distro alive..." ("kijin")
Supporting Quote: A practical challenge in maintenance involves security: "The biggest problem is fixing security flaws with patches that dont have 'simple' fixes. I imagine that they are going to have problems with accurately determining vulnerability in older code bases where code is similar, but not the same." ("worthless-trash")

🚀 Project Ideas

RetroPatch Backport Service (RPBS)

Summary

A specialized service that automates the difficult and tedious process of backporting security patches from modern upstream software versions to severely outdated, frozen OS bases (like Ubuntu 14.04, RHEL 6/7, or specific embedded systems).
Core value proposition: Providing verifiable, tested security maintenance for legacy systems where manual backporting and vulnerability reproduction are extremely resource-intensive ("maintaining such an old codebase while the rest of the world moves on...ugh...").

Details

Key	Value
Target Audience	Enterprises, government agencies, or industrial control system (ICS) integrators currently locked to ancient but critical operating system versions.
Core Feature	Automated vulnerability scanning against known CVEs, automated attempts to apply modern upstream patches (or derived fixes) to the legacy source tree, automated compilation/testing in isolated legacy environments, and delivery of tested `.deb`/`.rpm` files.
Tech Stack	Python (for orchestration and patch adaptation logic), Docker/LXC (for creating and managing the ancient test environments), Source control analysis tools (to compare modern vs. legacy code deltas).
Difficulty	High
Monetization	Hobby

Notes

Why HN commenters would love it: It directly addresses the pain described by worthless-trash and fweimer: "The biggest problem is fixing security flaws with patches that dont have 'simple' fixes." and the difficulty of applying patches when source code has diverged. It offers a productized solution to "retrocomputing" maintenance.
Potential for discussion or practical utility: High. It touches on enterprise risk management, the viability of long-term software support, and the engineering talent required to maintain non-standard life cycles.

Compliance Evidence Reporter (CER) for Legacy Stacks

Summary

A SaaS tool designed to automatically generate auditable proof that obscure software components across frozen LTS distributions (e.g., specific versions of openssh or libssl on Ubuntu 14.04) have been patched against specific CVEs.
Core value proposition: Eliminating compliance friction for customers who need to satisfy external auditors (like PCI DSS) who flag EOL software based on version numbers, not patch status ("SecureMetrics will scan your system, find an 'old' ssh version and flag you for non-compliance").

Details

Key	Value
Target Audience	IT/SecOps teams dealing with strict regulatory compliance (PCI, HIPAA) on long-lived infrastructure.
Core Feature	Ability to ingest CVE lists and running system manifests; consults a database of vetted backport fixes (either purchased/generated via an upstream service or manually curated); and outputs PDF/JSON compliance reports showing "CVE-XXX Addressed via Patch YYY on Version Z.Z.Z."
Tech Stack	Web framework (e.g., Django/Rails), PostgreSQL for storing vulnerability/patch mapping data, reporting generation libraries.
Difficulty	Medium

Notes

Why HN commenters would love it: It solves the "why pay for LTS if I still have to prove it" problem explicitly mentioned by jwr and thewisenerd. It turns the existential dread of compliance audits on frozen systems into a manageable reporting exercise.
Potential for discussion or practical utility: Very high. Compliance friction is a major driver for paying for extended support, making this a direct monetization opportunity leveraging the core security pain point.

Dependency Stability Benchmarker (DSB)

Summary

A proactive analysis tool that models the likely maintenance path and stability risk of a user-defined software dependency set (e.g., a Python 3.4 environment or a specific set of C libraries) against proposed modern OS upgrades.
Core value proposition: Helping decision-makers evaluate the cost/benefit of upgrades by quantifying the "drift" risk inherent in stable stacks, addressing sentiment that modernization often breaks things ("...an upgrade adds/removes/changes features from how they were before.").

Details

Key	Value
Target Audience	IT managers, system architects, and developers choosing between maintaining a frozen stack vs. attempting a risky migration ("I don't see a good reason... to upgrade it much," countered by, "Imagine the world of pain when the time comes to upgrade...").
Core Feature	Analyzes dependency trees (e.g., via dependency graphs or lock files) and simulates compatibility against target OS versions, highlighting major library ABI breaks, removed deprecated functions, or necessary toolchain updates (like compiler versions or `systemd` incompatibility).
Tech Stack	Rust or Go (for performance in dependency graph traversal), SBOM generation tools (like Syft/Grype), Static Analysis tools.
Difficulty	High
Monetization	Hobby

Notes

Why HN commenters would love it: It appeals to the desire for long-term stability while acknowledging the real pain of upgrades, offering data instead of philosophical debate ("I'd much rather stand up a replacement system adjacent to the current one, and then switch over, than run the headache of debugging breaking changes every single release.").
Potential for discussion or practical utility: Strong. It translates the abstract concept of "technical debt" into measurable incompatibility points, offering a tool for risk assessment before committing to an upgrade path.