install 13.04 or stay with 12.04 LTS?

Question

I've been excited about 13.04 since reading about the new features and new designs made in it. I tried using 12.10 but, in my opinion it is okay and feels a little sluggish to me. 13.04 is suppose to be faster and more stable then 12.10 so, I think I like 13.04 more. I'm only disappointed with Raring Ringtail's support for 9 months instead of 18 months. Would 13.04 support really end at January or will it last a little longer to use by then. Or is Ubuntu 12.04 LTS a wiser decision to choose?

Solution

A good answer by Eliah Kagan is Should I wait for 13.04?

But staying with a release that will last 9 months (And taking into consideration that every 6 months a new version comes out) the question would be then if you want to stay on 13.04 forever or would like to do an upgrade once 13.10 or any newer version comes out (Note that this is only done once every 6 months).

If this is not the case I would suggest to sticking with the last LTS which was the 12.04 although if you are like me and wish to see a stable but more updated system, updating from one version to the next every 6 months is no big deal. At least as an end user. I even have a very slow connection (32KB/Seg) and don't mind downloading the ISO or upgrading my current version once every 6 months.

So which one to choose depends on if you want to be up to date, or want to stick with one that will receive updates for several years. I want to add that you will also receive updates with the other releases but doing the ugprade every 6 months will simply guarantee that you are up to date and receive additional updates for the timeframe of that release. Best of both worlds (Again, for end users that do not mind downloading the upgrades every 6 months).

Comments

[John]

Are the standard releases as stable as the LTS?

[Luis Alvarado]

@user138784 Yes. They are actually all stable after released. It is one of the goals before releasing it. The difference is the time they have for support with the LTS having the longest.