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Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long?

Ubuntu has CVE-2026-98432 marked as a 9.8, but yet it's coming up on a week with no update to fix it. It's still marked as "work in progress" (though at least now they've listed a mitigation):

https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2026-98432

I've had mitigations in place for a week, but this response is really shaking my confidence in Ubuntu. I'm just trying to understand what is going on with Ubuntu. Do they have too many kernels (that page is loooong), do they not have enough automation in the build/test pipeline, are their engineers overwhelmed?

We are moving into a world where there are going to be vastly more security issues; if you can't keep up now, where are you going to be in the next 6 months?

For a long time keeping on top of OS updates has been a huge part of keeping the attackers at bay. However, the world is changing.

( 147 comments | on HN )
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by adsfasf on Friday November 06, 2026 @10:26AM (#50393489)
Aren't the patches out since a day?
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by guyisit on Friday November 06, 2026 @10:29AM (#50393530)
Holy crap, they are showing in apt… why in the world wouldn’t they update the dang CVE page?!

I agree though, this took too long.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by slekker on Friday November 06, 2026 @10:51AM (#50393874)
Likely needs a human from another department to press a button, and they have not "synced" with the team publishing the patch.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by chasd00 on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:10AM (#50394232)
They need to "stack hands" and "gain alignment". ( i work in consulting :P )
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by khoury on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:41AM (#50394725)
Thank you for this! Finally patched
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by AnotherGoodName on Friday November 06, 2026 @10:39AM (#50393671)
It's Canonical. The company that literally asks for high school grades and a multi-page essay on any job application and will pass if you're not in the 99th percentile of year 9 maths even while requiring many years experience. All the while they pay a fraction of any other Bay Area tech company.

What i just described isn't a joke or an exaggeration. It's literally part of the application process and you can look this up.

Anyway they are quite simply hopelessly mismanaged and no one should be touching Canonical products with even a 1000ft pole at this point.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by hmokiguess on Friday November 06, 2026 @10:45AM (#50393779)
Can you share the backstory behind your gripe, this comment feels oddly specific to what appears unrelated to someone outside who doesn't know what you know. Makes me think there's some personal and deeper roots behind it
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by pluc on Friday November 06, 2026 @10:48AM (#50393830)
It's pretty straightforward, go have a look at their careers site and application form. What parent is saying I believe is that they're leaving a lot of talent on the table because of questionable hiring practices; talent that would help proactively (or at least reactively) mitigate things like this.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by AnotherGoodName on Friday November 06, 2026 @10:52AM (#50393890)
Look it up so it isn't just coming from me. It's a quick Google "Canonical hiring process" and there's no shortage of wait wtf was that type of posts on this. You can also go on their website and try to apply for any job just to be further shocked.

They ask for; A massive multi-choice questionaire. A massive free form list of questions. An ask for an essay. Grades from High school through to University. That's to start the process of many rounds of interviews followed by finally an interview with Mark Shuttleworth himself who's known to say no on vibes.

Personally i applied for a senior management role after ~30years working at multiple other very large and well known companies. The pay at canonical was literally 1/5th but i was curious. I was honest about my high school scores and immediately given a thanks for your time but we will pass dialog on their website after stating maths scores in year 9. I'm not even fucking kidding. Obviously i was gobsmacked. It was a blessing to get knocked back that early all things considered.

Not my post but has more detail and matches what i saw. Be amazed at the insanity in the leadership at Canonical that allows for this; https://www.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/15kj845/can...

We're talking put him in a straightjacket loony tunes type of shit when it comes to Shuttleworth. You can also look up various personal interactions. It's utterly fucking insane.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by actionfromafar on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:12AM (#50394262)
You'd think space-faring South African billionaire would be Musk, but no.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by matheusmoreira on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:48AM (#50394829)
> What sort of high school student were you?

What sort of answer are they looking for here?

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by aidenn0 on Friday November 06, 2026 @01:17PM (#50396116)
"Top 10% of my class"
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by warkdarrior on Friday November 06, 2026 @02:37PM (#50397276)
"Sorry, we only hire from the top 0.001%."
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by alfanick on Friday November 06, 2026 @10:52AM (#50393892)
It's common. I interviewed there years ago - full rebel, did not provide them my transcripts, grades etc. Last interview supposedly is run by Shuttleworth himself. Anyway, got a better gig meanwhile.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by bitfilped on Friday November 06, 2026 @10:56AM (#50393964)
Just go interview there and you'll learn all about it for yourself.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by shmel on Friday November 06, 2026 @10:59AM (#50394024)
Not OP, but why is it unrelated? Hiring practices and salaries are very much related to staff working in a company. A lot of people just refuse to jump through the hoops when they have a choice where to work. People willing to do so will just go to FAANG to maximize TC. That leaves us with a more desperate and less qualified pool of candidates. I doubt many people dream about working in Canonical, it isn't Google from decades ago.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by dominotw on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:05AM (#50394124)
Lol what an infuriating comment. "you must be butthurt from your interview"
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by AnotherGoodName on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:09AM (#50394207)
To be fair i did get knocked back but not at all butthurt since it was at the very first stage on the application after filling in high school maths scores from ~40 years ago in a country that doesn't even have GPAs (so i have no idea what to even enter in that box).

The knockback didn't hurt. It just made me think Canonical was lead by a lunatic and a quick Google will confirm this.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by FireBeyond on Friday November 06, 2026 @01:36PM (#50396388)
Hah, yes, see my comment elsewhere - it broke my recruiter's brain when I said I didn't have any Year 9 or Year 10 grades to enter, but had graduated high school.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by nancyminusone on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:11AM (#50394241)
I don't currently nor have ever even worked in the industry but have heard so many stories so often about this sort of thing it is now permanently associated whenever the name Canonical comes up.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by woodruffw on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:00PM (#50394990)
I have no particular insight into Canonical's problems, but all large companies "ship their org chart" to some degree. Insofar as Canonical has abstruse hiring practices, it stands to reason that practical failures to perform adequate security responses are downstream of those practices.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by ndiddy on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:15PM (#50395248)
It's because Canonical spams LinkedIn with tens of thousands of job posts (despite only having ~1800 employees) because they put ads for the same remote job listing in hundreds of different cities. As a result, basically anyone who's ever looked for a tech job on LinkedIn has at least looked at the first step of Canonical's job application process (including where it asks about how well you did at math in high school, your SAT scores, your college class ranking and GPA, etc).
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by BeetleB on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:12AM (#50394268)
Reminds me of Epic (healthcare company). I was close to finishing grad school, and they wanted my SAT scores. When I gave it to them, they couldn't stop gushing. I wanted to wash my hands with a lot of soap at that point.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by lotsofpulp on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:51AM (#50394869)
They wanted it because the SAT serves (or used to serve) as a decent proxy for IQ. A business cannot ask an applicant to take an intelligence aptitude test without a lot of extra cost to ensure it complies with Griggs v. Duke Power Co (1971), so the cheaper workaround is to ask for SAT scores in conjunction with other proxies such as the school into which you were able to gain admission.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by BeetleB on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:10PM (#50395149)
> In the US, businesses ask for it because the SAT serves (or used to serve) as a decent proxy for IQ. A business cannot ask an applicant to take an intelligence aptitude test without a lot of extra cost

Epic actually did (does?) administer a full blown "entrance exam" - generic problem solving skills, with some basic coding and math stuff. They literally arrange with the university to administer it in a classroom setting. So yeah, kind of like an aptitude test.

See https://pigment.is/blogs/blogs/epic-systems-skills-assessmen...

I actually don't mind that, as it ensures all applicants are being judged on a level field.

It's quite rare for people graduating with a BS to be quizzed about SAT scores - the focus tends to be more on GPA, etc. But asking for SAT scores when you've been in grad school for so long...? Kind of ridiculous. And if you are going to ask, might as well ask for the GRE scores instead.

They also did (do?) a full personality quiz. You know, the type where they give you a scenario, and say are you more of A or B, and you often find yourself to be neither or both...

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by tptacek on Friday November 06, 2026 @01:20PM (#50396159)
Businesses can and do ask applicants to take general cognitive tests, without excess compliance costs. IQ testing is presumptively legitimate for essentially all white collar jobs. The biggest companies that administer these tests for hiring companies have logo crawls that include a few of the best known companies in the world.

The reason more companies don't use IQ tests is that they don't work well for candidate qualification. Also, candidates hate them.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by lotsofpulp on Friday November 06, 2026 @05:51PM (#50399575)
Thanks, I must have been misinformed. I was told that 20 years ago when a lot of NYC HFT firms used to (still do?) ask for SAT scores.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by cmdrk on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:20AM (#50394400)
can confirm, interviewing there was unpleasant and demanded a ridiculous amount of work before ever getting to talk to a human. There was a post on HN a little while back about someone who made it much further along in the process: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44149549

Made me happy I was cut loose early.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by ethin on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:41AM (#50394734)
Yeah, I did try applying to them a year or so ago and got a lot of those questions too. The really weird thing to me (and what confuses me) is why exactly they want these questions? How exactly is someone supposed to share their "rationale or evidence for the high school performance selections above" when the "grades" for maths/native language is decided by the institution/teacher doing the grading and not by the student? And, even better: why exactly does Canonical need this information at all? I'm pretty sure that it's well-understood that your grades in high school (let alone college) say absolutely nothing about you today. And there are many, many, many reasons why someone in HS or college might perform poorly but in actuality they're brilliant and very capable.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by atomicnumber3 on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:54AM (#50394912)
Shuttleworth is rich and Ubuntu/Canonical is his personal feudal holding. They basically can do whatever dumb thing they want and none of it actually matters because they don't really need to respond to market forces.

I've worked for one of these businesses before - basically staffing a daycare running a very compelling roleplay scenario so a millionaire/billionaire has an excuse to get away from their family for 10 hours a day. It works best if you're a fresh grad college kid who doesn't realize any of that for a few years and is just glad to have gotten a job.

So, the actual intent of all of their hiring circus is to ensure they don't accidentally hire someone who realizes what's going on.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by 93po on Friday November 06, 2026 @03:48PM (#50398303)
I think regardless of the school and instructor's difficulty, there's a group of people who basically make perfect grades in STEM topics (or all topics) regardless of those variables. And for some people it's easy to know what their grades were 20-30 years ago because their experience was "I made effectively perfect grades at everything my entire school career" and will vividly remember the couple exceptions. I didn't pride myself on my grades and it wasn't encouraged at all by my parents or peer group, but I was one of those students, and have the experience of remembering exactly the one class I got a B in (photo journalism, the teacher hated me). I don't say this to brag, this account isn't tied to my name, but more just explaining what Canonical is perhaps looking for
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by ethin on Friday November 06, 2026 @04:29PM (#50398778)
I can't really agree with this. Even if we consider only college grades and not HS ones, the wider the gap between your university days and you today is, the less representative those grades are. I think this is especially relevant for the high school scenario though: even if your the perfect student, your HS days might be 10-12 years behind you and your probably a completely different person today factoring in life experiences and all that. Like I just struggle to see how grades (or, really, any academic performance information in general) says anything about the you who is applying for a job unless your like a year fresh out of college and applying to an internship or something.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by 93po on Friday November 06, 2026 @04:50PM (#50398988)
nothing about the things higher education or employers look at is a perfect signal of what they want from employees. you have to try to use available data as best you can, and it's hard to find something more reliable than past results, regardless of how old those results are. obviously more recent results should be weighed more. but old results don't mean nothing.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by Hasz on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:28AM (#50394523)
I worked there for a couple years. IMO, the hiring process holds Canonical back from scaling like a typical tech co, but they probably don't want to. It also attracts a very specific type of person; everyone I personally worked with was very bright and capable.

IME, because of pay, they have a hard time retaining "senior" talent, eg Nvidia, Chainguard, Amutable, Lambda, etc etc etc all have lots and lots of senior+ Canonical engineers. Especially in the age of AI, I think this is a "people-strategy" mistake.

The application process is very long and you absolutely lose great candidates because of it. Salaries are not US-tech competitive, but absolutely are Central/South America and Europe competitive. Lots of great Brazilian and Polish engineers, for example.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by ndiddy on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:17PM (#50395267)
> It also attracts a very specific type of person; everyone I personally worked with was very bright and capable.

How well did you and your colleagues do at math in high school?

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by queenkjuul on Friday November 06, 2026 @03:38PM (#50398154)
Well if they work at canonical we know they did very well
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by nish__ on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:24PM (#50395363)
If they're so bright and capable why can't they patch their OS?
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by throwaway27448 on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:33PM (#50395491)
[delayed]
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by throw-the-towel on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:38PM (#50395561)
I wonder why these bright abd capable people didn't join a company that actually pays reasonably.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by rcxdude on Friday November 06, 2026 @07:34PM (#50400421)
>I wonder why these bright abd capable people didn't join a company that actually pays reasonably.

Sounds like they do when they get the chance. I've worked for a company that didn't have quite as crazy a hiring process but they had the same basic profile - very good at hiring for potential in juniors, but underpaid for the ability they wanted. As a result they really struggle to hire seniors and are often a stepping stone to a better paid position. They do manage to keep some people until retirement, though (a very bimodal distribution - generally either brilliant but don't care to work anywhere else, or utterly useless and can't get a job anywhere else)

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by cute_boi on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:33AM (#50394593)
Feels like India approach where they will ask high school certificates and every personal details like marriage, family history and things like that lol.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by wannabe44 on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:12PM (#50395194)
Indian corporate has problems but this doesn't seem to be true apart from standard background checks (a la HireRight).
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by matheusmoreira on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:35AM (#50394626)
High school grades? That's pretty shocking.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by AnotherGoodName on Friday November 06, 2026 @03:07PM (#50397696)
Not the worst part. I didn’t even reach the stage of multiple psychometric tests others report.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by theideaofcoffee on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:44AM (#50394753)
I just love that this is always one of the top comments when it comes to Canonical.

"Nah, let's not build up our technical street cred by doing stuff right, we'll torpedo that by making bizarre aspects of our culture stick in people's minds. Success!"

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by qrtzka on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:46AM (#50394792)
Canonical is looking for bureaucrats, so at least they are honest in the hiring process. Look at the Canonical people on the Debian lists.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by _override on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:47AM (#50394797)
I wonder why they stop at high school grades. I don’t touch distros unless their engineers had perfect grades throughout elementary and middle school /s
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by tamimio on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:57AM (#50394951)
Haha, I remember years ago I did apply there but as soon as I saw the high school questions I just closed the page. Always pay attention to these red flags
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by FireBeyond on Friday November 06, 2026 @01:33PM (#50396355)
[delayed]
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by infamouscow on Friday November 06, 2026 @10:44AM (#50393755)
This is a problem with LTS distro kernels in general. You're trading the feeling of stability at the kernel level for security updates.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by layer8 on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:06AM (#50394153)
This is not a problem with Debian LTS, you’re getting timely security updates. Debian fixed this vulnerability three weeks ago within two days: https://www.debian.org/lts/security/
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by vanschelven on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:23AM (#50394427)
For Ubuntu it was _all_ their kernels though...
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by mxey on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:39PM (#50395581)
LTS distros can track the LTS kernels and they’ve all been updated
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by Maxatar on Friday November 06, 2026 @01:08PM (#50396004)
Ubuntu is the only Linux distro with an LTS release that has not patched this issue, so saying this is a problem with LTS distro kernels in general is categorically false.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by infamouscow on Friday November 06, 2026 @02:41PM (#50397340)
A large number of security issues are not backported to stable or LTS kernels because of resource constraints.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by Maxatar on Friday November 06, 2026 @08:15PM (#50400659)
To the extent that you've made specific claims, they are false. It's hard to argue with vague claims about tangentially fixing a security issue but at any rate just looking over LTS releases, they absolutely and frequently do backport security issues to LTS releases. They don't do it for every security issue, but the idea that they rarely do it or only do it as part of a tangential change is once again... categorically false.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by queenkjuul on Friday November 06, 2026 @03:37PM (#50398132)
Fedora took over two weeks to get a patch out too afaik
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by Maxatar on Friday November 06, 2026 @08:12PM (#50400648)
Fedora does not have an LTS release, but they patched 1 day before the CVE was published to the general public:

[1] https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/?search=CVE-2026-984...

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by Maxatar on Friday November 06, 2026 @08:18PM (#50400670)
Fedora doesn't do LTS releases, but they released the patched kernel two days before the CVE was publicly announced:

43: https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2026-bc7bd292...

44: https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2026-7b153c4c...

Fedora 45 was only just recently release and Fedora 42 and earlier will never get an official patch since those are no longer maintained.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by chrisvalleybay on Friday November 06, 2026 @10:54AM (#50393926)
There has been a workaround available since nov 2: https://ubuntu.com/blog/fixes-available-in-proposed-pocket-f...
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by InsidiousWombat on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:03AM (#50394093)
The fix is to install Debian
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by pedro_caetano on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:27AM (#50394488)
Debian also had a CVE (yesterday?) on a MITM affecting APT?

Arguably also affecting Ubuntu by Corollary with APT.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by fodkodrasz on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:40AM (#50394716)
Maybe... IBM RHEL. Or Arch. Or NixOS. Or Fedora. Anything that doesn't ship apt.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by tlamponi on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:56AM (#50394947)
They all had flaws and holes in their package manager in the past, or how are they magically 100% secure?
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by icedchai on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:53AM (#50394889)
Or build your own kernel from kernel.org and install that. I moved one of my Ubuntu dev boxes to 7.3.1.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by throw0101c on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:28AM (#50394524)
> since nov 2

Since October 26 (noble) and 28 (resolute), when the kernel versions in question hit "proposed". November 2 is just the weblog post, but the solution was available the week before.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by ChrisArchitect on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:10AM (#50394235)
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by bon0r on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:19AM (#50394372)
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by throw0101c on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:22AM (#50394421)
As outlined in this weblog post:

* https://ubuntu.com/blog/fixes-available-in-proposed-pocket-f...

The fixes were in the "proposed" repo since October 26 (noble) and 28 (resolute):

* https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux

One could pull them down at any point in the last week. Yesterday afternoon they were still in "proposed", but I checked this morning (EST/UTC-5) and they there were in "updates".

The kernels goes through an QA testing processes, and per this September post, they're looking at shortening the timeframe for kernel updates:

* https://canonical.com/blog/accelerating-delivery-of-cve-fixe...

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by gwbas1c on Friday November 06, 2026 @03:40PM (#50398188)
> The kernels goes through an QA testing processes, and per this September post, they're looking at shortening the timeframe for kernel updates:

Looks like they aren't flexible enough to get a 4-line fix out the door when they need to.

These situations need a CEO or other high up to pull some people into a room, and basically say, "this needs to be released by EOD."

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by throw0101c on Friday November 06, 2026 @04:27PM (#50398757)
> Looks like they aren't flexible enough to get a 4-line fix out the door when they need to.

Perhaps because Ubuntu, like most distros, release new kernels that include fixes and updates for more than one issue:

* https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:93413

* https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/6.8.0-149.149

* https://www.suse.com/support/update/announcement/2026/suse-s...

* https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/DSA-6568-1

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by cassianoleal on Friday November 06, 2026 @05:07PM (#50399142)
Perhaps that's the problem? Surely they use a version control system that allows them to branch off of older commit for these kinds of urgent patches.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by throw0101c on Friday November 06, 2026 @05:15PM (#50399218)
So distros should release a new kernel for each CVE? Or only the "important" CVEs? And if two "important" ones come out two days apart there should be two kernels running through the QA pipeline? So that people can reboot their production systems two days apart?
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by reverius42 on Friday November 06, 2026 @06:18PM (#50399840)
Yes, if two 9.8 kernel CVEs come out two days apart, then yes, everyone should be rebooting their prod systems two days apart.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by mjhay on Friday November 06, 2026 @06:26PM (#50399905)
Timely security updates are important. Debian LTS had the patch within a couple days. It’s not like you have to update if you don’t want to.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by fauchletenerum on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:30PM (#50401628)
No, just the ones rated 9 or higher
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by eptcyka on Saturday November 07, 2026 @01:27AM (#50402158)
Yes.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by cassianoleal on Saturday November 07, 2026 @06:50AM (#50403728)
> So that people can reboot their production systems two days apart?

A lot of people don't reboot their systems. They build new ones, shift workloads and traffic over, and decommission the old ones. I can do that multiple times a day if required with no disruption of services.

You don't have to stay patched if you judge the risk doesn't make it worth it, but Ubuntu is pretty much the only distro that made the choice for you.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by gwbas1c on Monday November 09, 2026 @09:51AM (#50426444)
> Or only the "important" CVEs?

This is why CVEs have severity ratings

> And if two "important" ones come out two days

Yes

> running through the QA pipeline

This is also why customers evaluate the CVE and their risk. The company I work for skipped a patch for a CVE because it was for areas that we don't use and weren't exposed to the public internet.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by gwbas1c on Monday November 09, 2026 @09:47AM (#50426389)
This isn't a "bug in the queue," it's a severe security update that requires immediate patching.

Pretty much every software vendor has a way to ship fixes for 0-day exploits. They're called "hot fixes" and generally bypass normal releases. (IE, where I work, we can bypass our normal releases and publish emergency bugfixes in a matter of hours.)

That's why the fix needs a leader to basically pull everyone into a room and say "get it out by EOD."

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by ravenstine on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:33AM (#50394594)
I was asking "what in the world is taking Ubuntu so long" back in 2006.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by tosti on Friday November 06, 2026 @03:16PM (#50397820)
Yeah, sorry. That was when the first LTS was delayed by 2 months. I don't recall that ever happening again these past 2 decades.

The good thing was a LOT of bugs were fixed in those 2 months. Also you can install or upgrade to U+1, so you could've upgraded in april.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by imjonse on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:05PM (#50395062)
Has there been a documented exploit of this CVE on Ubuntu or on the other distros before they were patched?
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by wtch98 on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:32PM (#50395472)
I haven't had a documented packet with IPOptions arrive on any of my firewalls, the packets are typically dropped, so exploiting remotely is going to be very difficult. In theory you could use another exploit and then lateral move in some networks which don't drop them at a router level.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by talon8635 on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:35PM (#50395522)
Here’s the real answer. It’s not as scary as the original reporters made it out to be.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by 1over137 on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:56PM (#50401753)
Then why is it rated 9.8? (Including by Ubuntu itself)
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by fwlr on Saturday November 07, 2026 @01:20AM (#50402141)
Because the rating system is not very good.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by talon8635 on Saturday November 07, 2026 @05:57PM (#50408838)
It’s not by RedHat. Does Ubuntu provide its own independent research and scoring?
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by icy-disrupt-sme on Monday November 09, 2026 @02:00PM (#50429983)
RedHat's web site shows it as a 9.8 at https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2026-98432. Now, there may be times when Redhat downgrades a score...say for example you have SELinux and the vulnerability is blocked by it but they usually track with the official number.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by wredcoll on Friday November 06, 2026 @02:35PM (#50397246)
Yeah, had this ever actually been proven in the "real world"?
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by cromka on Friday November 06, 2026 @06:33PM (#50399959)
Does it have to be? I am betting there's more people working on proving this and not disclose the proof than to do.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by wredcoll on Saturday November 07, 2026 @12:31PM (#50406323)
It doesn't have to be, but it's getting a bit weird that everytime this subject comes up nobody has an actual example.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by arto on Friday November 06, 2026 @02:39PM (#50397296)
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by vdfs on Friday November 06, 2026 @07:04PM (#50400236)
tldr: DoS and not RCE
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by nekusar on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:13PM (#50395203)
Maybe the patch is going through their interview process?
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by marcosdumay on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:26PM (#50395394)
You were wrong to have confidence in Ubuntu before this, you are doubly wrong for it to still be "shaking your confidence".

You are expecting some quality that was never there. Visibly so.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by warkdarrior on Friday November 06, 2026 @02:33PM (#50397226)
Do you have any evidence for why confidence in Ubuntu was misplaced before this? Or are you just vibe-accusing?
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by Scaled on Friday November 06, 2026 @03:11PM (#50397756)
Best example I can think of is when they shipped an update that they knew would cause corruption on ZFS disks and didn't warn people sufficiently to not update if they were using ZFS. (A warning was buried in the release notes, but such a serious issue should have held back release. Most normal people don't read fifty pages of docs before each update.)

I don't hate Ubuntu at all, but that incident showed a level of blithe carelessness to user data that is unacceptable and reduced my confidence in them.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by Sephr on Friday November 06, 2026 @03:52PM (#50398361)
They closed feature requests to add secure ISO downloads instead of figuring out how to secure their ISO downloads
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by VCFundedGenYer on Friday November 06, 2026 @06:09PM (#50399763)
Unity UI, Ads in the OS, paid subscriptions, etc.

At least 15 years of nonsense.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by lp92 on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:41PM (#50401679)
Wait what, I haven't used Ubuntu in a long time. They have ads like Windows???
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by worksonmine on Saturday November 07, 2026 @06:51AM (#50403742)
They run ads in MOTD IIRC. Haven't used it in 15 years but I've stumbled on a lot of drama over the years.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by unrented7977 on Saturday November 07, 2026 @09:55AM (#50405082)
Apt-get shows you ads for Ubuntu Plus or whatever it's called
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by varkokonyi on Sunday November 08, 2026 @10:49AM (#50414271)
Also the "Try minikube" or whatever in the MOTD. Not certain, haven't used ubuntu in a long time
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by xandrius on Friday November 06, 2026 @03:34PM (#50398100)
I'd love to try your open-source OS for my server next.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by VCFundedGenYer on Friday November 06, 2026 @06:08PM (#50399752)
Debian.

Ubuntu should be your last choice.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by machska on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:30PM (#50395456)
Does Ubuntu Pro get this fix any sooner, or is it the same for everyone?
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by bakugo on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:48PM (#50395687)
[delayed]
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by queenkjuul on Friday November 06, 2026 @03:47PM (#50398289)
Pro only gives you longer support periods, not extra support during the normal support period. That and livepatch and some other things i forget. But all updates within the normal support timeframe for a given release are the same with or without pro.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by atestu on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:52PM (#50395745)
Seems like a good time to ask: what do people use, if not ubuntu, on a web server? Like for example for a rails app, on EC2... asking for a friend (who is me).
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by esikich on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:56PM (#50395811)
I switched back to Debian.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by sgc on Friday November 06, 2026 @01:01PM (#50395895)
Me too
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by tasuki on Friday November 06, 2026 @03:06PM (#50397672)
Me three. I was surprised how same it all was. Except for the snaps! Debian doesn't force you to use snaps. This was perhaps the top reason I switched.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by sgc on Friday November 06, 2026 @07:38PM (#50400451)
Ha! Ditto. I abhor snaps.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by cantalopes on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:57PM (#50395835)
I think debian is a polular choice
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by 1over137 on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:59PM (#50395861)
FreeBSD
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by mad182 on Friday November 06, 2026 @01:05PM (#50395957)
I personally use Debian both on my servers and desktops, for the last 15 years or so.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by pluc on Friday November 06, 2026 @01:11PM (#50396028)
Marketing, man. Ubuntu did more for Linux than a lot of other things by just lowering the bar of entry.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by qwerpy on Friday November 06, 2026 @01:05PM (#50395959)
Ubuntu has been the easy default for things like WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) for my coding on Windows, and a linux VM on my home server. But I don't really like the idea of having a distro that doesn't treat security patching with urgency in the age of AI-fueled exploits. Need a standard distro with decent hardware support, low churn, and fast patching.

People are saying Debian. What are the tradeoffs? (other than faster patching on Debian of course)

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by esikich on Friday November 06, 2026 @01:38PM (#50396428)
Nothing really. Ubuntu is just a wrapper around Debian. If you are familiar with Ubuntu, it's basically exactly the same.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by dizhn on Saturday November 07, 2026 @01:46AM (#50402249)
I am someone who believes ALL Linux distros are basically the same but on the other hand Ubuntu does use some things like it's own network manager that is not the same as Debian as far as I know. And it has a working remote upgrade functionality which I used just yesterday. On Debian the process is manual and is not recommender to actually do.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by worksonmine on Saturday November 07, 2026 @06:56AM (#50403766)
> What are the tradeoffs? (other than faster patching on Debian of course)

Older packages, but that's one of the reasons I use it. On the stable branch you will only get security fixes and very rarely updates for critical bugs.

If you need to use newer packages the testing branch is surprisingly stable (it is the base for Ubuntu) but there are a lot of updates.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by mhitza on Friday November 06, 2026 @01:08PM (#50395994)
Rocky Linux. But I've built my career working with RHEL-compatible/derivative distros like CentOS, Fedora.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by kccqzy on Friday November 06, 2026 @01:43PM (#50396501)
[delayed]
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by SahAssar on Friday November 06, 2026 @07:20PM (#50400337)
That is a wild take, especially consider the GP asked for a server use-case. Do you just assume that all new versions should be taken as soon as possible for all packages?

There is a balance: too outdated is bad, too eager for new versions is bad. The tradeoff that LTS tries to take is older, proven versions but with relevant security fixes quickly.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by kccqzy on Friday November 06, 2026 @08:30PM (#50400742)
Not a wild take at all. Most server use cases already use containers to precisely specify what the server workload depends on, and can only access what's in the container. I see no reason for the base system to move slowly with proven versions. Even if you don't use containers, you most likely already use language-specific tools to lock in your dependencies. Leave these to the app developers and the sysadmin can move at any speed.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by 1over137 on Friday November 06, 2026 @10:37PM (#50401399)
>...I suggest you use a rolling distro

This doesn't seem to be popular with linux though. It's one thing I like about FreeBSD, everything is easy to keep very bleeding edge.

Maybe Debian 'testing'?, is that commonly run in prod?

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by jolmg on Saturday November 07, 2026 @12:21AM (#50401876)
>>...I suggest you use a rolling distro

> This doesn't seem to be popular with linux though.

Nobody gets fired for buying IBM.

Nobody gets fired for choosing Java.

Nobody gets fired for choosing Debian.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by nevon on Friday November 06, 2026 @02:16PM (#50396975)
Amazon Linux (2023, or 2027 once it's out of preview).
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by opengrass on Friday November 06, 2026 @02:28PM (#50397147)
Devuan, it's debian without systemd.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by Biganon on Saturday November 07, 2026 @04:29PM (#50408243)
What's wrong with systemd? I thought this boat had sailed
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by _mpn_ on Friday November 06, 2026 @02:47PM (#50397416)
I use Rocky Linux on my web servers and hypervisors.

However, since I run a VPS host most of my customers run Debian or Ubuntu, due to both being more approachable than RPM-based distros.

I'm not a huge Ubuntu fan due to it being a very heavy downstream of Debian, versus Rocky which is 99.9% RHEL. I hold no grudge against Ubuntu, they made desktop Linux very approachable when Mandriva, Knoppix, et al. weren't.

But Canonical is too much of a downstream versus Red Hat, constantly losing standards wars. And unlike BSD (where I can understand) Canonical is a downstream by choice. It's like Sony who keeps losing standards wars to rivals.

Even in my homelab EVE-NG runs on Ubuntu.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by bpavuk on Friday November 06, 2026 @03:24PM (#50397940)
for personal use I'd go with NixOS. NixOS "Unstable" is both pretty reliable and receives latest feature updates a lot faster than stable branches. Nix is simply the fastest to iterate with, for me personally, and having a VM or a Docker image declared right in my flake is something I love.

for something more serious than a personal project, I'd go with Debian because of their vast free support windows and some incredible companies providing extended support

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by queenkjuul on Friday November 06, 2026 @03:35PM (#50398114)
I still just use Ubuntu honestly
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by OJFord on Friday November 06, 2026 @03:56PM (#50398410)
Honestly Ubuntu doesn't even come to mind as a candidate... Alpine, debian, nix, distroless, scratch, Amazon Linux, coreos are what come immediately to mind that I'd expect to see.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by Zopieux on Saturday November 07, 2026 @04:32AM (#50403038)
NixOS, naturally.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by unrented7977 on Saturday November 07, 2026 @09:56AM (#50405092)
Debian is the only sane answer.

Well, I do use Arch on a lot of my VMs but still.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by xet7 on Friday November 06, 2026 @01:00PM (#50395886)
According to Canonical product team, fixed Ubuntu kernel is at proposed:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50348688

Or install newest mainline test kernel, but it had less testing, YMMV:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50358616

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by hollerith on Friday November 06, 2026 @01:23PM (#50396196)
I wouldn't focus too much on this one because your Ubuntu install probably has about 700 other vulnerabilities.

All Linux distros do.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by lousken on Friday November 06, 2026 @02:23PM (#50397091)
Why is anyone surprised about this? Ubuntu had a shitty track record of critical vulns for a long time, seeing so many in Wazuh was fun.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by dennysora-main on Friday November 06, 2026 @04:32PM (#50398807)
I now rely on AI to fix them, otherwise I simply can't wait for them to release updates.
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by VCFundedGenYer on Friday November 06, 2026 @06:07PM (#50399741)
Ubuntu is the Microsoft of the Linux world. Endlessly corporate, terrible decisions, and bureaucracy that’s prevents things from getting done quickly.

If you rely on Ubuntu, move to Debian.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by leecommamichael on Saturday November 07, 2026 @01:36AM (#50402198)
I installed their -proposed pocket kernel, then some tools on my machine broke so I installed arch with gnome and it's business as usual...

Back when I used arch last they didn't have `archinstall` which made it just as easy as anything else to configure. Arch wiki is still a great resource. Wasted a lot of time trying out desktops just to land back at gnome. Genuinely can't believe how bad Cosmic DE is after all this time. I should be nicer about that, but I'm willing to elaborate if anyone from Pop is here, no ill will.

I have a... potentially false sense of security now that I'm on a distribution that can keep up with all of this CVS madness. I wonder if it's not just the best way to do it going forward. We'll see, it could be so if things go the way Greg Kroah-Hartman supposes they will; that LLMs are just like when fuzzers were new, and the issues will gradually reduce over time.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by hyperman1 on Saturday November 07, 2026 @04:04AM (#50402903)
I've always wondered what is going on with Ubuntu. Right now, after the ICC rug pull, Europe is interested in an OS not controlled by the USA. Canonical should go all-in on an opportunity like this.

But even basic company tooling like Landscape is not doing great (Oh, look, all your machines are not fully patched 5 minutes after we released a patch. Sound the alarms)

Meanwhile, they spend a lot of effort on things that ultimately not gain traction. Upstart or snap might be technically OK, but socially they are dead ends. Half baked Rust coreutils in an LTS? Who asked for that?

I've seen multiple major CVEs and showstopper bugs just sit there, while Debian and Red Hat move weeks faster than them, and other individuals and big companies providing ppas with workarounds.

I like the company, but some major bigwigs over there need to wake up.

Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by pydevgo on Saturday November 07, 2026 @05:22AM (#50403244)
this exact scenario is why more teams are bypassing OS-level kernel patching entirely for workload
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by cweiske2 on Saturday November 07, 2026 @01:44PM (#50406887)
Did you pay for an Ubuntu subscription to support them?
Re:Ask HN: What in the world is taking Ubuntu so long? by icy-disrupt-sme on Monday November 09, 2026 @01:21PM (#50429383)
I suspect they, like Redhat, are including other non-critical updates in the updated kernel and who knows how many kernels they need to build/test since I know they produce custom kernels for cloud providers like AWS and Oracle. I really don't understand why they are all treating a critical update like this as "business as usual"...I saw evidence they kept rescoring the vulnerability to lower and then higher scores. I did see their blog posting saying they are moving from 4 week to a 2 week cadence for kernel updates which is a move in the right direction but AI is coming for our servers...someone needs to send a copy of Spencer Johnson's "Who Moved My Cheese" to Canonical, Redhat, Suse, et al who have made their fortunes back porting code...