Ubuntu and its various remixes remain free distros, but it's getting harder to remove the messages about the paid Ubuntu Pro offering… which is by design, and it's not going away.

Last year, we wrote about promotional messages in the output of Ubuntu's apt command and how some users were aggrieved by what they saw as advertising – even though Canonical made Ubunto Pro free of charge for individual users, on up to five machines, in October.

In the interests of fairness, we do note that Canonical responded to the first of those stories, and that it has added a way to turn the messages off. In a shell session, just type:

sudo pro config set apt_news=false

But these messages aren't the only ones that appear in the output if you update your machine from a terminal prompt. For instance, doing a full upgrade on the current 22.04 release on this vulture's own laptop, the following extra text appears:
Get more security updates through Ubuntu Pro with 'esm-apps' enabled: python2.7-minimal imagemagick libjs-jquery-ui libopenexr25 libmagickcore-6.q16-6-extra libmagickwand-6.q16-6 libpython2.7 imagemagick-6.q16 libmagickcore-6.q16-6 imagemagick-6-common python2.7 libpython2.7-minimal libpython2.7-stdlib

These "esm-apps" are programs eligible for cover under Canonical's Expanded Security Maintenance program. Of course, you can get rid of the notice by getting a free Ubuntu Pro account, attaching your computer to it, and nave puertas macizas interior enabling ESM Apps updates in the Software & Updates program, or alternatively, using the terminal