Canonical, through Leann Ogasawara, has announced a few hours ago, July 10, that they will drop support for HWE (Hardware Enablement) Stack from the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) operating system.

The support for hardware enablement stacks was implemented in the Long Term Supported Ubuntu 12.04 distribution in order for it to support a wider range of hardware components.

“In an effort to support a wider variety of hardware within the 12.04 Ubuntu LTS release, the 12.04.2 and newer point releases in Precise shipped with hardware enablement stacks composed of updated kernels and graphics stacks.”

“The intention has always been for these hardware enablement stacks to only remain supported until the introduction of the kernel and graphics stack derived from 14.04,” Leann Ogasawara said in the mailing list announcement.

Therefore, starting with August 7, 2014, when the 5th and last maintenance release of the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) operating system is released, the HWE Stack support will be dropped, as the distribution will be powered by the graphics stack and Linux kernel of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr).

Users of older HWE (Hardware Enablement) Stacks are encouraged by Canonical to update their current Ubuntu 12.04 installations to the Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS release or fully upgrade to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.