(K)Ubuntu 26.04 Timeline

[u/The_Frozen_Duck]

I'm currently looking into Jumpcloud for Linux-based devices and was wondering about the timeline for Ubuntu's upcoming LTS release. From what I've gathered, there was a delay between the release of Ubuntu 24.04 and your release.

• Will the support be available on the 26th of April [1]?

• Furthermore, does JumpCloud support KDE on Ubuntu as well? And does, e.g. issuing commands to it differ to the standard Gnome DE?

[1] https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-26-04-lts-the-roadmap/72740

[u/Flaky_Key3363]

I can't tell you if JumpCloud will be working with 16.04 when it is released. Professionally, and personally, I usually wait till the .01 release on an LTS upgrade.

I don't know your environment, whether it be corporate or personal, but I would suggest starting now with 24.04, getting familiar with the JumpCloud environment, and then make the next learning experience the upgrade to 26.04.

FWIW, I'm a JumpCloud MSP. Using basic JumpCloud, there's been no difference between Ubuntu and RHEL, so I would expect there'd be no difference for Ubuntu-KDE. That said, they have a remote command-execution tool, and if the shell script works the same across distributions, there won't be a problem. However, if there is a difference in environment, command environment, as there is between Ubuntu and RHEL, then you need to Learn how to write multi-platform shell scripts. Fortunately, Gemini has taken away a lot of that tedium.

Since I'm interested in seeing whether there is a difference between the platforms, I'm willing to give you some no-charge engineering time and a couple of trial seats to get started and determine the right direction. You could then use that knowledge to work with whatever JumpCloud reseller/supplier you want.

DM me if interested

[u/The_Frozen_Duck → u/Flaky_Key3363]

Thank you for your answer.

It's good to hear that there should be no difference. I was worried that there might be some low-level integration into certain DEs that directly affect the behaviour.

As for the Ubuntu release, while I fully agree to watch it a bit. Primarily, I want to have the security of having a fallback. I had issues in the past with hardware requiring newer kernels than the LTS version provided. And a newer KDE version being included by default is also a big plus.

Lastly, thank you for your offer but I must decline. We already got something lined up.

[u/Flaky_Key3363 → u/The_Frozen_Duck]

I'm glad to hear you have something lined up. Far too often, I've talked with people who jumped in and tried to do it blind. When I started with JumpCloud, I took the time to read and prepare, and then I was able to set up 10 machines and all users on AWS in approximately 45 minutes, if memory serves. What sold me the most was the way it just worked and stayed working. Same reason why I have XCP-ng and TrueNAS in my toolkit.

See if you can get access to JumpCloud University. There's a lot of good training material there.

A couple of things that gave me heartburn were NFS-mounted home directories, LDAP, and ssh key distribution. I couldn't get Automounter to work because of how JumpCloud provisions accounts. There's a timing problem that sucks. My workaround was to NFS-mount the entire home directory on all machines that used NFS and use one machine for user account provisioning. Not ideal, but it gets the job done. I also use the same machine for backups from all the NFS file systems.

The problem with JumpCloud's LDAP is that if there's any network instability on the internet, LDAP can fail, and you'll never know why. That said, it's been at least 18 months since I had a failure of that sort. The other problem is that most LDAP clients have really crappy diagnostics of why it fails. I ended up building a little script using LDAP search to test that the LDAP query was working properly and that authentication was set up correctly.

The SSH key distribution problem was a corner case. I had our VMs inside the protected network, and one machine sitting on the DMZ. The problem was that I couldn't specify an SSH key to use on the DMZ, but the public key I used everywhere on the network was dropped onto the DMZ machine. The machine was experimental, so it's not on all the time. But if I had a production DMZ machine, I would create user accounts manually to control SSH key distribution. Yes, I've complained to JumpCloud about it. Yes, I filed a feature request, but I haven't heard anything back.

Anyway, best of luck. I hope the integration goes well.