Ubuntu introduced a 9-month support cycle, and now the first release on this cycle is Ubuntu 1304 (April 2013) which as of January 2014 no longer has updates or security patches. Be forewarned, sysadmins now must regularly upgrade the OS version, and can no longer squat on a fixed OS for several years like in the past. Web and VPS providers like DigitalOcean should warn their clients they must upgrade their Ubuntu instance and reconfigure their droplet to use that kernel.
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Right, support for non-LTS versions of Ubuntu has been reduced to 9 months. <br> <br>See: <br> <br>http://fridge.ubuntu.com/2013/03/19/changes-in-ubuntu-releases-decided-by-the-ubuntu-technical-board/ <br> <br>https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases <br> <br>Of course, both DigitalOcean and Ubuntu offer longer support cycles as well. If you want long term stability, you should stay with the Ubuntu LTS versions which are supported for 5 years.