In late 2020, CentOS 8 announced that it would be reaching its end-of-life in December of 2021. This news was rather unexpected in both the open source and web hosting worlds. In response, we have been working towards providing solutions that will not just benefit our Partners and Customers, but also provide options as we move forward together.

Earlier this month, we announced that cPanel and WHM® version 94 will fully support AlmaLinux upon its launch date. We are equally pleased to now announce that cPanel & WHM version 102 will fully support Ubuntu LTS (version 20.04) as well. 

What Is Ubuntu LTS?

LTS, or Long Term Support, means that this version of the operating system is supported and patched by the developer for a minimum of five years, for free. A new LTS version is also released every two years, with thousands of security patches applied to each version. In other words, Ubuntu LTS is predictable, stable, and secure.

Ubuntu does have an amount of similarities to CentOS, but some notable differences as well that provide additional benefits for certain situations. For example, development or application hosting that utilizes more modern technology may find Ubuntu to be a preferable Linux distribution. Single-user servers may also particularly benefit as well.

What This Means For You

As our Partners and Customers begin to investigate and execute their upgrade plans as a result of the CentOS announcement, we remain committed to providing as smooth of a transition as possible.

Additionally, we are also taking the necessary steps to mitigate any single vendor risk to cPanel support in the future. By supporting multiple Linux distros from different OS vendors, any unexpected end-of-life announcements from third parties in the future will no longer be as impactful.

If you have any feedback or comments, please let us know; we are here to help. You’ll find us on Discord, the cPanel forums, and Reddit. Be sure to also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.