Zephyr LTS
Security maintenance built for the full device lifecycle
Zephyr LTS expands security maintenance for Zephyr RTOS to up to 15 years, giving you the confidence to build long-life devices that meet both customer and regulatory requirements.
Innovate at pace by spinning up a ready-to-use Zephyr dev environment with Canonical Workshop, and benefit from seamless OTA security updates, powered by Golioth’s IoT cloud platform.
Long-term support for long-lived devices
Focus on a great customer experience, not compliance. Available as part of Ubuntu Pro for Devices, Zephyr LTS brings the predictability of the Ubuntu release cycle to microcontroller devices. Starting with Zephyr 26.04 LTS, Canonical will release a Zephyr distribution every 2 years for long-term supported releases, and every 6 months for interim releases.
Exceed the requirements of the Cyber Resilience Act
Upstream Zephyr offers 5 years of support. However, embedded devices are often designed for longer lifecycles. Zephyr LTS bridges the gap and offers up to 15 years of patching and maintenance, exceeding the CRA mandate and freeing your teams up to focus on delivering for customers – not compliance.
Native OTA, with Golioth
Zephyr LTS provides you with a built-in pipeline, to deliver patches and updates, through the Golioth SDK: an out-of-the-box solution for turnkey over-the-air (OTA) updates, unique credential provisioning, and remote device management. In a single command, you have everything you need to satisfy CRA requirements in an easier way, without building custom tools.
Launch sandboxed development environments
Avoid custom configurations and vendor-locked extensions. Canonical Workshop provides repeatable, sandboxed development environments for Zephyr LTS in a single command. It's agent-ready and containerized, isn't locked to any specific hardware vendor, and lets developers run west build immediately, cutting the time from first install to first build.
One provider for Linux and MCU-class devices
Most connected products aren't just one device, they're a fleet, with Linux-class gateways and edge compute running alongside microcontroller-class sensors and actuators. Moreover, hybrid architectures based on MPU and MCU combined in one SoC are becoming more and more present in the market.
As part of Ubuntu Pro for Devices, Zephyr LTS enables manufacturers to source support for both MCU-class and Linux-class devices from a single, trusted provider.
That means one point of contact, one procurement process, and one trusted supplier standing behind every device in your product line, regardless of which OS or RTOS it runs.
Available starting with Zephyr 26.04 LTS
Long-term support releases of Zephyr will come out every two years, following the same timing as Ubuntu and giving certainty to developers with up to 15 years of support.
As with Ubuntu, interim releases will be published every 6 months for developers needing cutting edge features, with these being supported for 9 months.
Resources
Documentation
Blogs and further reading
Talk to us about your device management needs
Want to know more about Zephyr LTS? Are you looking for advice on your next IoT project? Our team would love to hear from you. Get in touch by clicking the button below.