Microsoft Adopts “Linux-Like” Long Term Support for Windows 10!

Well, for Windows 10 Enterprise, that is! It is about time! This is why Linux has always been more robust in the major LTS distros!

Windows 10 Enterprise customers will now get Linux-like support

ZDNet – By Ed Bott – “Microsoft’s release cadence for Windows 10 has been the stuff of nightmares for IT pros. New feature updates (the equivalent of full Windows upgrades) arrive every six months and are supported for only 18 months. When you’re accustomed to deploying major Windows versions every five years or so, the idea of having to make those large, coordinated moves every year is daunting, to say the least.

Effective this month, for enterprise customers willing to pay the Enterprise edition premium, Microsoft is granting an extra year’s support. The new changes are designed to encourage slow-moving enterprises to pick up the upgrade tempo for hundreds of millions of Windows 7 PCs, before that older OS reaches its retirement date in less than 500 days.

Today’s announcements are the latest twist in a series of changes and extensions in the three years since Windows 10’s initial release in 2015. In November 2017, Microsoft extended support for version 1511 by six months, to April 2018. (The blog post announcing that change is no longer online.)

Then, in February 2018, Microsoft announced similar six-month ‘servicing extensions for Windows 10,’ but this time with a noteworthy gotcha: The new, 24-month support lifecycle applied only to Enterprise and Education editions. If your organization has devices running Windows 10 Pro, they need to be updated every 18 months or sooner.

For all intents and purposes, Microsoft is adopting a release cadence that is strikingly similar to what Linux users are already familiar with. Ubuntu Linux, for example, has a nearly identical twice-yearly release schedule, offering Long Term Support (LTS) versions in the spring and interim releases in the fall.”