@rtrickie
If you think that Ubuntu 14.04 or 16.04 are the same as they were when they were released in 2014 and 2016 respectively, then you don't understand what a Long Term Support release is all about.
There have been plenty of patches while they were mainstream, and will be additional security patches if you enroll in the ESM program. These systems do not have to beun-patched.
There are many reasons (like systemd which changes the behavior of significant parts of Linux quite drastically) why people don't want to go beyond 14.04, and others introduced after 16.04 that many like me don't like.
There are also organizations that are not wanting to put the effort into all the regression testing required to ensure that their systems will operate as they want at a later release. As I said, things change with newer releases which break other things.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
