5 years is half of the Ubuntu LTS and the previous CentOS Linux lifecycle. This is why many consider CentOS Stream to be a significant departure from CentOS Linux. Not saying it is a bad OS but it is no longer a free Linux operating system with long term support.
>An Ubuntu LTS is a commitment from Canonical to support and maintain a version of Ubuntu for five years.
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>Not saying it is a bad OS but it is no longer a free Linux operating system with long term support.
Ubuntu LTS is suppored for 5 years, Debian Stable is supported for 5 years, and OpenSUSE Leap is supported 5 years (as far as I can tell - the only documentation I found said "up to" 60 months).
Ubuntu LTS has an additional 5 years of security support through Extended Security Maintenance thus giving LTS releases a full 10 year lifecycle. https://ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle
>ESM is available through an Ubuntu Advantage for Infrastructure subscription for physical servers, virtual machines, containers and desktops, and is free for personal use.
Note that if you click through "personal use" means "up to 3 machines" and obviously doesn't apply to infrastructure. RHEL has free "personal use" subscriptions too, except they apply to up to 16 machines.
And also:
> Initially, free subscription is available for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS only.
The fact is if someone wants to run a Linux host for 10 years with security patches they can with Ubuntu. They cannot with CentOS Stream. Yes, they could switch to RHEL and pay for security patches but RHEL is a different OS than CentOS Stream.
