Canonical is making some changes to the way micro-updates are being handled for all the Ubuntu branches, which should make the distribution a lot more flexible.
Ubuntu usually receives something called Stable Release Updates or SRU for short and most of the time these are package updates. It’s a well-known fact that Ubuntu systems don’t get important updates once the distribution becomes stable. This is why you don’t see upgrades for major packages during a regular cycle, with some exceptions, and this what it’s changing right now.
Developers have noticed that the exceptions no longer all that rare and that things need to be adjusted to fit the upgrades from upstream. Until now, upgrading from upstream after a new stable cycle started was not really an option. The team wanted to keep things as stable as possible and to avoid breaking the OS. The truth is that many other distros are updating now during the stable cycle, and it doesn’t seem to be a big problem.
Canonical is changing the way it updates Ubuntu after launch
Martin Pitt explained in an email the changes that are made to Ubuntu update model and it looks like something that the community will love. It will be difficult to say about regular and LTS releases that they remain behind all the other competition.
“The Technical Board has now updated the policy for generalizing the applicability of new upstream microreleases for SRUs. This obsoletes the MicroReleaseExceptions sub-page. The policy was also extended to permit backporting new features to LTS releases under certain safe conditions. Please note that this should still be done with common sense and care, and relatively rarely,” wrote Martin Pitt.
This would means that Ubuntu LTS versions will get more than just kernel backports and stuff like Unity new features should become a lot more common.
Via Softpedia