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This will be enforced starting on July 29, 2016.

This is a notice regarding releases of Ubuntu that have reached End of Life.

The following versions of Ubuntu and derivatives are officially end of life as of July 28, 2016:

  • Wily Werewolf (15.10).

New questions regarding the above posted after the aforementioned date may need to be considered off-topic. Old questions (posted before the end of life date) that are still being answered regarding these releases should have a comment included on them about upgrading to a supported release to continue to get support for their versions of Ubuntu.

This information can be confirmed via the 15.10 End of Life Announcement email message stating the official End Of Life date, establishing July 28th, 2016 as the EOL date for Wily.

Please upgrade to a supported release to continue to receive support via Ask Ubuntu and Ubuntu Security updates. If you don't like upgrading every 9 months, it is highly recommended you install a long term support release in the future.

This Meta thread is NOT a discussion of how we handle EOL releases. This is simply a notification to all about an upcoming "End of Life" date for a current release of Ubuntu (as of this posting being made). Please refrain from asking in comments about how we handle EOL questions, or commenting on such handling policies.

Relevant related posts:

15
  • 9
    Takes off hat in respect of Wily's passing.
    – Nathan Osman
    Commented Jul 8, 2016 at 4:40
  • 5
    RIP willy werewolf, looks like the werewolf is dying from age...
    – user527600
    Commented Jul 8, 2016 at 7:16
  • 21
    @Edity Please. It's "wily". Yours means something else.
    – Byte Commander Mod
    Commented Jul 8, 2016 at 8:07
  • 1
    "may need to be considered off-topic." -> may need or will?
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Commented Jul 19, 2016 at 15:10
  • @FranckDernoncourt "May" - there are a few cases where questions regarding 15.10 after EOL may not be 'offtopic' (such as "How do I upgrade from 15.10 to 16.04" or such, though they'll just get marked as dupes of the how to upgrade questions that already exist heh). After having done a bunch of these EOL notices it's been refined to let a little bit of give exist, but not so much that it's insanely broad.
    – Thomas Ward Mod
    Commented Jul 19, 2016 at 15:17
  • 1
    hats off, man. ]\
    – Rinaldo Jonathan
    Commented Jul 26, 2016 at 8:38
  • TOMMOROW- ubuntu 15.10 RIP
    – user527600
    Commented Jul 27, 2016 at 1:10
  • So I have to burn another Ubuntu DVD? .......what a fun time to be had.
    – InitializeSahib
    Commented Jul 27, 2016 at 21:16
  • 1
    @SahibPrime No you don't, USB drives are dirt-cheap. :)
    – QwertyChouskie
    Commented Jul 28, 2016 at 1:27
  • 15.10 IS NOW R.I.P
    – user527600
    Commented Jul 29, 2016 at 3:28
  • 15.10 dead. But now only LTS versions supported!
    – fosslinux
    Commented Jul 31, 2016 at 23:53
  • @ubashu In less than 4 months, a new release should be out (16.10)!
    – EKons
    Commented Aug 1, 2016 at 8:08
  • Yep but for now only LTS.
    – fosslinux
    Commented Aug 1, 2016 at 8:16
  • 2
    Could we please change the title to "A silver bullet has come for the Wily Werewolf"?
    – ford prefect
    Commented Aug 4, 2016 at 14:09
  • 2
    This is about Wily Werewolf. As announced here this is now off-topic.
    – noɥʇʎԀʎzɐɹƆ
    Commented Aug 9, 2016 at 1:37

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
12

For those who would rather not upgrade to Ubuntu 16.04 for whatever reason such as a lack of support for AMD's old fglrx driver, note that Ubuntu 14.04 LTS will still be officially supported until April 2019, according to this.

Ubuntu 16.04 does have advantages over 14.04, such as an updated Linux kernel that provides better hardware support. The wireless card in my laptop had strange problems until upgrading to Mint 18. Ubuntu 16.04 also requires less updates after installation and will have greater support for software in the future. For example, Ubuntu 12.04 is supposed to be supported until April 2017, but a lot of newer software only seems to have instructions or official PPAs for 14.04+.

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  • Why downgrade to 14.04?
    – EKons
    Commented Aug 1, 2016 at 8:09
  • 1
    @ΈρικΚωνσταντόπουλος If possible, the upgrade to 16.04 would be better, but there are a few reasons why 14.04 may be the only option. For example, AMD's fglrx driver is now unsupported and will not come to 16.04, and the drivers AMD made to replace it are only for their newest cards, forcing users to use the open source drivers. While this isn't necessarily bad, sometimes this can cause problems with certain games and is usually behind on OpenGL versions. Also, Steam has a lot of problems when trying to use open source drivers. (Which aren't hard to fix, but are extremely annoying.)
    – JohnDoe
    Commented Aug 1, 2016 at 18:01
  • Miss 15.10... :(
    – EKons
    Commented Aug 1, 2016 at 18:04
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Not all questions tagged with an out of support version are off-topic as some of these are not version specific. I recall occasions where the OP tags the question with the version they are using without realizing that the answer is the same for numerous versions (one or more of which may still be supported) Example Question: How can I see how my drives are partitioned with Ubuntu 15.04? Example answers could include CLI solutions such as fdisk -l and GUI solutions such as gparted both of which were valid then and are still valid on supported releases. In order to help the maximum amount of users it's important to watch for mis-tagged questions where the answer is still valid for currently supported releases. In this case, remove the erroneous tag and answer as usual. Question title may also have to be changed to reflect the on-topic nature of the question. There are numerous examples on the site of questions with answers that are still valid today that may have been written for a no longer supported version. (Granted we keep those that were current when answered anyway, but you see my point.) I'm sure I'm not the only one who has removed a version tag that wasn't relevant to the question being asked.

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  • 1
    I see what you are saying, but another point is that upgrading to a supported version of Ubuntu should be a troubleshooting step that comes before asking about the problem on this site. It can be hard to determine what problems would not be problems anymore if the user was using a supported version.
    – thomasrutter
    Commented Jul 25, 2016 at 6:35
  • @thomasrutter I see an example is in order. I'll modify my answer to avoid further confusion
    – Elder Geek
    Commented Jul 25, 2016 at 12:29
  • Not all questions are troubleshooting questions.
    – Elder Geek
    Commented Jul 25, 2016 at 12:33
  • That's true, in which case then I agree a version tag is not relevant and, as you say, can be removed or ignored.
    – thomasrutter
    Commented Jul 26, 2016 at 0:40
  • @thomasrutter I would lean towards removal as ignoring it just leaves a stumbling block for the next person (who may or may not know) who has to decide whether it's version specific or not.
    – Elder Geek
    Commented Jul 27, 2016 at 13:16

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