What happens after 18 months?

[Ken G.]

Steve Lamb wrote:
> Florian Diesch wrote:
>   
>> "Carlos S." <xdonzorrox at yahoo.com> writes:
>>     
>>> after 18 months I am on my own or have to pay for the latest and
>>> greatest .. afer 18 months how would one aquire the updates and
>>> security updates??  
>>>       
>> One would either upgrade to a supported version (that's for free) or
>> keep the system current on your own (most likely you don't want that).
>>     
>> Ubuntu doesn't offer updates for 9.04 after that neither free nor for
>> money.
>>     
>      Specifically Ubuntu releases a version every 6 months.  Each of those is 
> supported for 18 months.  So by the time support for 9.04 runs out 9.10, 10.4 
> and 10.10 will have been released, each with 18 months of support.
>
>      In addition to that one version every ~2 years is dubbed Long Term 
> support (LTS).  LTS versions are supported for 3 years thus giving you 1 year 
> to migrate from one LTS version to the next.  The last LTS is 8.04 which will 
> be supported until sometime in 2011.
>
>   
Am I to assumed correctly that my present version of Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty 
Jackalope) will automatically be upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) 
on 10/29/09 or do I have to reinstall the new version?

Ken