asp.net core - What is the difference between LTS and GA in Microsoft .NET releases?

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GA is General Availability - fully supported, not a pre-release, there won't (shouldn't) be any breaking changes.

LTS is Long Term Support - so not just GA, but also expected to be supported for a significant period of time.

So if you're running a web application internally that you can reasonably easily update, you might want to stay up to date with the latest GA version... whereas if you're deploying software that is relatively hard to update, and needs to be supported for long periods, you may well wish to stick with LTS versions.

The way they used "GA" in that image, it's probably better to think of it as "Non-LTS". All releases are GA. – omajid Sep 28, 2020 at 14:52 @omajid: No, the current release of .NET 5 isn't GA, for example - it's a release candidate. That isn't shown within the roadmap, but it's still definitely a thing. (And I would expect the LTS versions to still be talked about as "going GA" for the final release.) – Jon Skeet Sep 28, 2020 at 14:58 Serves me right for choosing impresice language! I meant "release" release, as in final releases.A s opposed to pre-releases and release candidates (and alphas, and betas). – omajid Sep 28, 2020 at 15:40 @omajid: Right - but I still tend to think about GA as being "better than a pre-release" rather than "not as good as LTS". I'd focus on what it does promise rather than what it doesn't. – Jon Skeet Sep 28, 2020 at 16:34

When talking about GA by Microsoft and read the other posts that's a fully and problem-less release, yes thats true.

https://dotnet.microsoft.com/platform/support/policy/dotnet-core

Watch on the Time-Table Periods, a GA is called "Current" here and it also means, after the LTS comes, the GA is dropped!

When find a worse issue in a GA after a LTS is there, it will be fixed in the LTS and not in the GA of the past. Also it should not happen, i mean it's a GA, but as a developer... never think never

just my 2 cent.

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