Ubuntu Pro (formerly known as Ubuntu Advantage) was originally offered to enterprises for providing them with extended security maintenance updates to Ubuntu LTS releases for an extra 5 years of updates.

Now Canonical has introduced Ubuntu Pro for free, which is good thing for Ubuntu users to long-term usage and also helps Canonical to attract more users to Ubuntu.

With the Free Ubuntu Pro plan you can now take advantage of:

  1. 10-year Security Updates: critical, high and selected medium security updates
  2. Advantage of Livepatch: automatic kernel security hotfixes without rebooting
  3. Supports up to 5 devices

Prerequisities

  1. Ubuntu One Account (To manage Ubuntu Pro Tokens)
  2. Ubuntu Machine (running 16.04 LTS, 18.04 LTS, 20.04 LTS, 22.04 LTS or newer)

Ubuntu One

Ubuntu One is the single account you use to log in to all services and sites related to Ubuntu. You can use your existing Ubuntu single sign on or Launchpad credentials to log in. Your Ubuntu single sign on account is now called Ubuntu One account.

To create an account follow these steps:

  1. Create new account here: Ubuntu One
  2. Confirm the email address by clicking the provided link in your email
  3. Now you will be automatically redirected to your Ubuntu Pro dashboard
  4. Copy the TOKEN or Command from Documentation:
sudo pro attach <YOUR-TOKEN>

Ubuntu Pro Dashboard

Attach Token with Ubuntu

  1. Open your terminal and make sure your ubuntu machine is up to date.
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
  1. Now you can attach your Ubuntu Pro token
sudo pro attach [YOUR_TOKEN]

After you will this output:

sudo pro attach [YOUR_TOKEN]
Enabling default service esm-infra
Updating package lists
Ubuntu Pro: ESM Infra enabled
Enabling default service livepatch
Canonical livepatch enabled.
Unable to determine current instance-id
This machine is now attached to 'Ubuntu Pro - free personal subscription'

SERVICE          ENTITLED  STATUS    DESCRIPTION
esm-infra        yes       enabled   Expanded Security Maintenance for Infrastructure
fips             yes       disabled  NIST-certified core packages
fips-updates     yes       disabled  NIST-certified core packages with priority security updates
livepatch        yes       enabled   Canonical Livepatch service
usg              yes       disabled  Security compliance and audit tools

NOTICES
Operation in progress: pro attach

Enable services with: pro enable <service>

     Account: [YOUR_EMAIL]
Subscription: Ubuntu Pro - free personal subscription

Note: This output will depend on your Ubuntu LTS version.

Enable the esm-apps service

sudo pro enable esm-apps --beta

Output:

sudo pro enable esm-apps --beta
One moment, checking your subscription first
Updating package lists
Ubuntu Pro: ESM Apps enabled

After that, you should see that your Basic Security Maintenance plan was changed to Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) in the Updates tab of the Software & Updates utility.

References