Why can't I use older versions of Linux on a Droplet?
Using out-of-date operating systems can pose large security risks for your Droplet and risks letting hackers and malware enter your system. This can cause:
- Downtime
- Financial losses due downtime
- Defacement of your website with malicious images or threats
- Loss of customer trust
- High bandwidth usage
- Financial losses due to paying for malware removal services
- Irreversible data loss
Because using an out-of-date operating is a high security risk, we cannot in good conscience allow users to create new Droplets that use older images of operating systems. You can review our image deprecation policy for a list of images we currently support and our image deprecation lifecycle.
You can also check to see if the Linux distribution version you’re trying to use is out of date on that distribution’s documentation:
In rare circumstances, you may need to briefly use an out-of-date operating system. For example, you may need to run your software on an old version of Linux long enough to migrate the data out of the software or Droplet, and then upgrade it. If you need to do this, you can use our custom images tool to create an image containing an older version of Linux and create a Droplet with it.
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