Knowledgebase

Table of Contents

• Consideration when selecting an OS
• What is EOL?
• What happens after EOL?
• Operating System Support Periods
• Debian
• Ubuntu
• CentOS
• AlmaLinux

Considerations when selecting an OS

When selecting an operating system and version for your server it is important to consider the current lifespan of the operating system. It is best to select an operating system which has some longevity and reduce the need to migrate servers. Choosing an operating system which is still receiving support and ongoing updates will protect your server against bugs and new security exploits.

What is EOL?

Once the support period ends for an operating system it is usually referred to as EOL (End of Life).

What happens after EOL?

Support for older operating systems is often not maintained by software the panel relies on. Liquidsoap has especially dropped support even before EOL in some cases such as CentOS 7 which hit EOL after 10 years.

After EOL hits operating systems will be depreciated by MediaCP. Being depreciated blocks new installations, migrations, and restoration. Tools and upgrades are not blocked from our end but may still fail and will eventually be blocked from upgrades once breaking issues are detected. CentOS for example will shut down repositories which results in issues upgrading even if we have not blocked upgrades.

Operating System Support Periods

Operating systems have various terms for their stages of support, be it LTS, Security Support, Active Support, Extended Security Maintenance. This can make understanding how long an operating system will be viable difficult. You can see a rough outline of the support periods for our supported operating systems here as well as when we will depreciate and drop support:

Debian

Debian systems have a 5-year lifespan, 3 years of full support and 2 years of LTS support.

Debian is our recommended operating system; it is rock solid and well supported with a 5-year support lifespan. Even after EOL we find customers not hitting incompatibility for quite a while.

• Debain releases will be deprecated at EOL.

• Media Control Panel update compatibility ends 6 months after EOL.

Ubuntu

Ubuntu LTS releases receive 5 years of standard security maintenance for all packages in the ‘Main’ repository. After this security support is available to customers who purchase Ubuntu Pro subscriptions, however as most customers do not purchase this and security updates don’t guarantee support from software the panel relies on we do not count this towards depreciation.

• Ubuntu LTS releases will be deprecated at the end of standard support.

• Media Control Panel update compatibility ends 6 months after the end of standard support.

CentOS

Active support ends after 5 years and packages are archived to vault.centos.org resulting in dnf/yum breaking immediately after support ends. This then requires manually changing over to the vault repositories to complete any upgrades and a very abrupt stoppage.

• CentOS Stream releases will be deprecated at the end of full support.

• Media Control Panel update compatibility ends 6 months after end of full support.

AlmaLinux

Almalinux releases boast a 5-year support active support period and 10-year security support. This is great for security, but it may mean that software used by the panel drops support for the operating system due to lack of active support/updates. We cannot guarantee compatibility due to this reason, however we will try to maintain updates for an additional year after full support ends for AlmaLinux 8.

• AlmaLinux releases will be depreciated after active support ends.

• Media Control Panel update compatibility ends 6 months after active support ends.