ROS Noetic is EOL – take action to maintain fleet security

As of May 2025, the Robot Operating System (ROS) Noetic Ninjemys officially reached its end of life (EOL). First released in 2020 as the final ROS (1) distribution, ROS Noetic has been the default choice for thousands of developers building on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For developers and businesses running mission-critical systems on ROS Noetic, this change can raise concerns around security, stability, and ongoing maintenance.

Canonical has added Noetic to its ROS ESM service, which delivers ongoing security updates and critical fixes for ROS packages. This allows developers to confidently continue using EOL ROS distributions, such as Kinetic, Melodic, Foxy, and now Noetic, well beyond their upstream support periods. With ROS ESM, they’ll receive backported CVE patches, bug fixes, and essential updates aligned with Canonical’s long-term maintenance standards.

Long-term maintenance for ROS Noetic

With over 800 repositories in rosdistro, ROS Noetic remains one of the most widely adopted and actively maintained ROS 1 distributions and a vital part of many production systems. Now that it has reached EOL, upstream development and package maintenance are no longer provided by the ROS maintainers.

This shift has significant implications for security and compliance. Most organisations using robots today need to meet cybersecurity requirements, and that means keeping all software up to date. Whether it’s a laptop or a robot, running devices with unsupported software on a company network is often considered a compliance violation. Regulations like the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) make this even more important. As a result, robotics users are rightfully asking their suppliers to make sure devices stay updated. The consequences of not doing so can be serious.

The conclusion is simple: companies with deployed devices in the market should migrate to a supported distribution. However, migrating a large robotics codebase isn’t always simple – it takes time, resources, and careful testing. Dependency changes, field recalls, and stability revalidation all add complexity. In mission-critical systems, even brief downtime can lead to significant losses.

While the aim is to migrate eventually, you might need some time. ROS ESM gives you an extra 5 years of support beyond ROS Noetic’s EOL, aligned with Ubuntu 20.04’s extended maintenance through 2030.

ROS ESM is part of Ubuntu Pro, and so ROS Noetic

ROS ESM Noetic is part of Ubuntu Pro for Applications, giving you a hardened, long-term supported ROS environment. It’s included as part of Canonical’s broader Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) offering, which also covers the full Ubuntu base system.

ROS ESM is part of Ubuntu Pro, which, for ROS Noetic users, includes:

• Security patches and CVE fixes for ROS Noetic core packages
• Critical bug fixes and stability improvements
• Guaranteed support through 2030, aligned with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS ESM
• Full tooling integration and enterprise-grade support for deployment at scale
• 2,300 packages in the Ubuntu Main repository supported for 5 years after EOL
• An additional 23,000+ packages in the Ubuntu Universe repository for 10 years from release date
• More than 600 packages across ROS 1 Kinetic, Melodic and Noetic and ROS 2 Foxy
• Landscape for managing Ubuntu fleets
• Kernel Livepatch to apply critical patches without rebooting
• FIPS and CIS security certifications
• Real-time kernel access for latency-sensitive workloads
• 24/7 support for thousands of open source packages

Ubuntu Pro is free for personal use. For businesses, Ubuntu Pro provides a pricing model designed for device makers. To learn more about what Ubuntu Pro offers, visit the Ubuntu Pro overview.

Easy onboarding, minimal disruption for ROS Noetic users

Getting started with ROS ESM is simple. Once Ubuntu Pro is enabled, a dedicated PPA delivers your ROS Noetic updates, no need to modify your existing application or environment. You can choose to receive just security updates, or include bug fixes as well. Either way, you maintain system stability while buying time for a future migration.

Whether you’re managing fleets of industrial robots, autonomous vehicles, or academic research platforms, ROS ESM ensures long-term operational continuity without costly migrations.

Use ROS Noetic ESM inside Docker containers

If you’re a Docker user, there’s good news: ROS ESM support extends to your containerized environments as well. With Ubuntu Pro, you can securely embed your Pro token inside Docker images to enable continued access to critical updates and patched packages.

Canonical’s recommended approach uses Docker BuildKit and secret mounts to ensure your Pro token never ends up in a final image layer, keeping credentials safe while enabling services like ros, esm-infra, and ros-updates during build. For teams already leveraging Docker in production, this offers a lightweight, infrastructure-agnostic path to increase the security and support of Noetic containers without switching packaging formats.

To learn more about enabling Ubuntu Pro services in Docker, check out the official guide. And if you’re distributing containers at scale or need help managing tokens across teams, talk to us – we’re here to help you make the most of your ROS ESM coverage in containerized environments.

Portable and reliable: ROS Noetic on Ubuntu 24.04 with snaps

In addition to traditional apt-based deployments, Canonical maintains a number of ROS distributions as snaps, including ROS Noetic, providing confined, portable, and easily upgradable environments that run on any supported Ubuntu release, including the latest Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

This allows you to decouple your robotics applications from the underlying OS version, and simplify maintenance across heterogeneous fleets. The snap includes the core ROS Noetic stack, preconfigured and containerised with strict confinement to improve system security. 

For teams needing continued access to Noetic, especially on newer Ubuntu LTS releases like 24.04, we recommend using these snaps in a private Dedicated Snap Store. This gives you full control over how you distribute and manage your applications, and critically, it allows you to embed your Ubuntu Pro tokens directly into your closed-source snaps. This makes it easier to access ROS ESM and other Pro features, even in restricted or offline environments. It’s a scalable, securely designed solution that can simplify deployment and long-term maintenance. If this sounds like a good fit for your needs, reach out – we’d love to help you get started.

Upgrade to ESM for ROS Noetic today

If you rely on ROS Noetic and are concerned about the impact of its upstream EOL, Canonical’s ROS ESM is your path to continued stability and support. With seamless integration into your existing Ubuntu infrastructure and enterprise-grade maintenance until 2030, ROS ESM Noetic helps you keep innovating without disruption.

To learn more or request access, visit the ROS ESM page, read the ROS ESM docs, or contact Canonical’s robotics team directly.