What is a Long Term Support (LTS) Release?

Long-Term Support (LTS) release is normally associated with an application or an operating system for which you will get security, maintenance and (sometimes) feature updates for a longer duration of time.

The LTS versions are considered to be the most stable releases which undergoes extensive testing and mostly includes years of improvements along the way.

It is important to note that an LTS version of software does not necessarily involve feature updates unless there’s a newer LTS release. But, you will get the necessary bug fixes and security fixes in the updates of a Long Term Support version.

An LTS release is recommended for production-ready consumers, businesses, and enterprises because you get years of software support and no system-breaking changes with software updates.

If you notice a non-LTS release for any software, it is usually the bleeding-edge version of it with new features and a short span of support (say 6-9 months) when compared to 3-5 years of support on an LTS release.

To give you more clarity on LTS and non-LTS releases, let’s take a look at some pros and cons of choosing an LTS release.

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