Today, July 23, was the last day when Canonical released security patches and software updates for its Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) operating system, as the distribution reached end of life.

Dubbed Utopic Unicorn, the Ubuntu 14.10 operating system was announced by Canonical back on October 23, 2014 and was supported with software updates, bugfixes, and security patches for nine months. On July 23, 2015, the 9-month month support cycle officially ended and the software channels are now closed.

Additionally, Ubuntu 14.10 users are being informed by Canonical that new Ubuntu Security Notices will no longer include information about the Utopic Unicorn distribution. Users need to take all the measures required to prepare their system for a possible upgrade to the current stable version of Ubuntu Linux (see below for details).

"Ubuntu announced its 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) release almost 9 months ago, on October 23, 2014. As a non-LTS release, 14.10 has a 9-month month support cycle and, as such, the support period is now nearing its end and Ubuntu 14.10 will reach end of life on Thursday, July 23rd," says Adam Conrad.

Users are urged to upgrade to Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet)

As Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) is now no longer supported, Canonical urges all users who still have the distribution installed on their systems to upgrade to the Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) release, which will continue to receive security updates and bugfixes for five more months, until January 2016.

All the details regarding the upgrade from Ubuntu 14.10 to Ubuntu 15.04 have been prepared by Canonical and Ubuntu developers at the following address: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VividUpgrades. Make sure that you read everything carefully, make a backup of your important data, and upgrade to Vivid Vervet as soon as possible.