January 27, 2012 – Ubuntu developer Canonical has announced the general availability of Ubuntu Pro subscriptions for Ubuntu users who want to extend their system’s security updates and compliance.

Ubuntu Pro, first released in Beta in October 2022, is available for free on up to five devices for personal and small business use. Ubuntu Pro is available only for Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support) versions, starting with Ubuntu 16.04, and promises 10 years of security updates, as well as access to proprietary tools.

These include Ansible, Apache Tomcat, Apache Zookeeper, Docker, Drupal, Nagios, Node.js, phpMyAdmin, Puppet, PowerDNS, Python 2, Redis, Rust, WordPress, ROS and more.

The Ubuntu Pro subscription promises to patch critical CVEs in less than 24 hours and extends optional technical support to an additional 23,000 open-source packages and toolchains beyond the main operating system, not just Ubuntu’s main software repository.

“The beta release has been well received by companies such as NVIDIA, Google, Acquia, VMWare and LaunchDarkly. Since the beta release in October 2022, tens of thousands of Ubuntu users have signed up for the service,” Canonical said.

Ubuntu Pro also gives users access to FIPS 140-2 certified encryption packages, tools for compliance management in regulated and audited environments, Livepatch support for no-reboot kernel updates, and large-scale automated patching for system management and use of Landscape.

Canonical said that if more than five PCs require an Ubuntu Pro subscription, they must purchase a paid plan, currently priced at $25 per year for workstations and $500 per year for servers, with a 30-day free trial. Official Ubuntu community members can get free support for up to 50 devices.

The add an Ubuntu Pro subscription to an Ubuntu LTS device, users need a free Ubuntu One account where they can access the Ubuntu Pro token. This can be enabled on the system via the Software and Updates utility, in the Livepatch tab, or manually via the command line by running the following command (where TOKEN must be replaced with the user’s Ubuntu Pro token)

Sudo ua attach TOKEN

To see if the Ubuntu Pro subscription is active, go to the Updates tab of the Software and Updates utility and look at the “For other packages, this system has ” under the Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) program is active.

For those running Ubuntu in the cloud, Ubuntu Pro is also available through Canonical public cloud partners, such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.