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Developer 5 min read Published Updated Credibility 79/100

Developer Enablement Briefing — May 31, 2025

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS leaves standard support in May 2025, requiring CI/CD runners, container bases, and appliance images to shift to 22.04+ or adopt ESM with clear risk acceptance.

Zeph Tech Research Lead

Research lead, Zeph Tech

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Executive briefing: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS leaves standard support in , shifting security fixes to paid Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) and increasing risk for teams that still rely on Focal Fossa as their base OS.1 CI/CD runners, golden images, and appliance firmware built on 20.04 will stop receiving free kernel and OpenSSL updates once the transition happens, creating compliance gaps unless organizations upgrade to 22.04+ or subscribe to ESM.

Why it matters to platform owners: GitHub Actions, GitLab, and Jenkins fleets frequently pin ubuntu-20.04 to preserve reproducibility. After May 2025, those images either stall on stale packages or move to Canonical’s ESM repos, where update cadence and package coverage differ from standard support.2 Teams shipping agents, sidecars, or ISV appliances on 20.04 also need to account for kernel ABI changes when they eventually rebase to Jammy (22.04) or Noble (24.04).

Risks if you stay on 20.04 without ESM

  • Unpatched vulnerabilities: Without ESM, CVE fixes stop arriving via apt. This erodes PCI DSS and SOC2 evidence, and it increases exploitability for CI/CD hosts exposed to third-party builds.
  • Package drift: Language runtimes (Python, Node, Java) and build essentials in the 20.04 repos will freeze, making it harder to align SBOMs with upstream support policies.
  • Cloud image availability: Cloud marketplaces and runner providers phase out older images shortly after standard support ends, which can break autoscaling groups or hybrid builders that assume 20.04 exists in registries.

Upgrade plan for CI/CD and platform engineering

  1. Audit base images: Identify Dockerfiles, Packer templates, and GitHub runner pools that reference 20.04 or focal. Classify workloads that process customer data or production releases for first-wave rebases.
  2. Rebase to 22.04 or 24.04: Validate toolchains (glibc, gcc, Python, Node, Java) against Jammy or Noble images. Re-run end-to-end tests to catch libc or kernel-headers differences that affect native builds.
  3. Decide on ESM posture: If migration cannot complete before May 2025, enroll critical hosts in Ubuntu ESM and document the compensating control in your secure SDLC and risk register.1
  4. Update pipeline templates: Move reusable CI templates and self-hosted runner configs to ubuntu-22.04 (or ubuntu-24.04 when available) so new services launch on supported images.
  5. Communicate deprecation gates: Publish the May 2025 cutoff in developer portals and platform SLAs, noting that requests for new 20.04 hosts will be rejected unless an approved exception references ESM coverage.

Bottom line: Ubuntu 20.04’s transition out of standard support is a CI/CD and platform hygiene deadline. Modernizing base images now prevents a scramble for ESM tokens, avoids broken runner pools, and keeps security attestations aligned with supported operating systems.

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