Originally published at: https://blog.particle.io/long-term-support-lts-releases-for-device-os-are-now-available/
At Spectra 2020, we announced our plan to develop a Long Term Support (LTS) release for Device OS. Our team is excited to share that after months of development and internal testing, our first broadly available LTS release, Device OS 2.0.0, is now available in the Web IDE, Particle Workbench, Particle CLI, and our GitHub releases page for Device OS.
Beginning with today’s release, Particle will be maintaining two active branches of Device OS – a Long Term Support branch (Device OS 2.x), and a new feature development branch (Device OS 3.x). The first release candidate in our new feature development branch (3.x) will be made available before the end of this year.
What are Long Term Support (LTS) releases?
Particle is constantly improving Device OS with new releases that add features, increase performance, and improve the standard behavior of Particle devices to better meet the needs of our customers. However, for some users these changes in behavior can introduce unexpected and undesired risk to the stability and reliability of their existing application. Long Term Support (LTS) releases solve this problem by providing guarantees of consistent behavior and stable performance across all releases in the LTS branch.
Our new LTS release branch (Device OS 2.x) is feature-frozen in time – it will not receive updates that include new features, API changes, or improvements that change the function or standard behavior of the device. Our LTS releases are, however, supported by an extended support window which will address any critical bugs, regressions, security vulnerabilities, or issues that we might discover in the future.
Should I use Particle’s new LTS release?
In general, LTS releases are suitable and recommended for all customer applications that do not require the latest features from our feature development branch (Device OS 3.x).
Compared to standard Device OS releases in our feature branch, LTS releases are:
- Enterprise focused. LTS releases are targeted at risk-averse enterprises who are deploying large fleets of devices supporting mission critical operations on a daily basis.
- Reliable. We shorten the development window and increase the testing window for LTS releases to allow for more testing and bug fixing.
- Supported. LTS release branches are supported by a Long Term support policy (more details here) that delivers backward-compatible bug fixes and security patches.
- Predictable. LTS releases have a clearly-identifiable major version number (Device OS 2.X.X) and are released with regular frequency with clear support timelines.
- Upgradable. Any further updates to LTS are tested for backward compatibility and upgrade path from earlier LTS versions to make upgrades fast, simple, and low-risk.
While LTS releases are appropriate for use by all Particle customers, LTS releases may be especially attractive to:
- Risk-averse customers who value reliability over the latest and greatest features.
- Enterprise customers who want access to top-tier, white-glove support SLAs.
- Customers who only want to update Device OS when focused improvements to reliability and security are available.
- Customers who need a consistent foundation to support rapid iteration of their firmware application.
For more information about LTS releases, release practices, and support policies please read our help center article here.
What’s next for Device OS?
Looking forward, Particle will continue to add features and make improvements to Device OS via our new feature development branch, Device OS 3.x. Our first release candidate for Device OS 3.0, which includes a number of exciting changes, is expected before the end of the year.
To stay up-to-date on the latest changes and releases from Particle, please visit and subscribe to our product changelog at http://changelog.particle.io.