Why does Kubuntu and Xubuntu 16.04 LTS support end sooner than the official Ubuntu EOL date?

Solution 1:

The Ubuntu BASE has a 5 year support on ALL releases specified as LTS. The distribution specific software (ie. LXDE desktop, KDE desktop) have a 3 year support -from Canonical-.

Also mind that those 5 years are divided into 2 parts:

• 2 1/2 years: hardware and maintenance
• 2 1/2 years: maintenance

The 3 year LTS versions are supposed to start to prepare the newly released LTS (since that one is released every 2 years).

Solution 2:

Please see the notes on LTS releases here.

The project will decide which flavours will be LTS and the support duration for each, early in the LTS development cycle.

In practice, Ubuntu/Canonical asks flavours themselves to decide on LTS participation and nominate a support period.

Normally that would be between:

• Not LTS (9 months)
• Short LTS (3 years)
• Normal LTS (5 years)

Factors such as people available, technical state of the flavour's desktop stack, future plans etc, will influence that choice.

Solution 3:

Ubuntu is officially supported by the canonical. The rest are supported by the community. I supposed it has something to do with the financial ability of official Ubuntu to be able to support it for much longer