Fedora 21 End of Life Date
Fedora 21 end-of-life date, support status, and CVE risk. Data reconciled from official vendor documentation and endoflife.date at every build; the source of each date is on the product page.
Fedora 21 was released on December 9, 2014 and support ended on December 1, 2015 — a supported lifespan of 1 year, in line with the 1 year and 1 month median for Fedora releases. Its latest release on record is 21, published December 9, 2014 — 1 year before support ended. It has been past its end-of-life date for 10 years and 11 months. 22 newer Fedora releases have shipped since.
Some vendors and third parties sell security patches beyond end of life; whether one covers this version varies. Compare your options.
Compare Options →| Version | Latest | EOL Date | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 (Yarrow) | 1 | Sep 20, 2004 | EOL |
| 2 (Tettnang) | 2 | Apr 11, 2005 | EOL |
| 3 (Heidelberg) | 3 | Jan 16, 2006 | EOL |
| 4 (Stentz) | 4 | Aug 7, 2006 | EOL |
| 5 (Bordeaux) | 5 | Jul 2, 2007 | EOL |
| 6 (Zod) | 6 | Dec 7, 2007 | EOL |
| 7 (Moonshine) | 7 | Jun 13, 2008 | EOL |
| 8 (Werewolf) | 8 | Jan 7, 2009 | EOL |
What does Fedora 21 end of life mean?
When Fedora 21 reaches end of life, the maintainers stop issuing security patches for this version. CVEs discovered after the EOL date are publicly disclosed on the National Vulnerability Database with no patch available. Exploit code frequently appears on GitHub within days of disclosure.
The CVE blind spot: A CVE-based scan does not show the ongoing accumulation of unpatched vulnerabilities in EOL software versions. Some scanners flag unsupported versions of common products, but coverage varies, and none of them give you the date in advance. Running Fedora 21 past its EOL date creates a growing attack surface that a clean scan result does not rule out.
Migrate to Fedora 45 or implement compensating controls — network segmentation, enhanced monitoring, restricted access — while migration is underway.