By Marius Nestor - October 5, 2022 Canonical: Canonical launches free personal Ubuntu Pro subscriptions for up to five machines
Ubuntu Pro is now available: here is what you need to know By Martin Brinkmann - January 31, 2023 Canonical: Ubuntu Pro enters general availability
Last March, I enabled Ubuntu Pro on my Kubuntu 22.04 systems, to take advantage of Expanded Security Maintenance (ESM). I disabled the Ubuntu Pro livepatch client service, as I don't run a server and I don't think I need livepatch. I checked the Ubuntu Pro status, now with livepatch client service disabled: sudo pro status Since enabling Ubuntu Pro, I've seen a number of ESM updates: for ImageMagick (dependency of Shutter), for FFmpeg, libexo (dependency of Xfce4-screenshooter), and also the 20 June 2023 USN-6180-1 fixes for VLC media player security issues. It's good to see those patches, but I think it's rather worrisome that even on Kubuntu 22.04 LTS one needs to have Ubuntu Pro enabled to get ESM patches for the mentioned applications and packages. Although it's not a surprise that with LTS not everything is patched, that was discussed in the 2016 Wilders thread Ubuntu LTS: many vulnerabilities despite long-term support. I'm happy that with enabling Ubuntu Pro, taking advantage of ESM, at least some additional patches are available.
