Since there has clearly been some confusion about this:
- There is no such thing as an LTS version of OpenJDK. OpenJDK versions 8 and 11 aren’t special in any way.
- Oracle declare certain versions of their commercial Oracle JDK distribution (which is an OpenJDK build) as LTS versions, which they support for an extended period of time for their paying customers. This has no bearing on OpenJDK except that Oracle may or may not continue to upstream bug fixes from Oracle JDK to OpenJDK.
- Other vendors may or may not provide their own sort of long-term support for certain versions of their own OpenJDK distributions. For instance, the AdoptOpenJDK group have been following Oracle in what they declare as LTS versions so far. Azul have been doing the same but also declared certain intermediate versions (13 and 15 so far) as “medium-term support” releases whose end of support is at least 1.5 years after the next LTS is released (which greatly decreases the incentive to use an LTS version that is more than a year old).
Again, there is no such thing as an LTS version of OpenJDK. Likewise, there is no such thing as an LTS version of the Java programming language and standard library. There is also no guarantee that an upgrade from 11 to 17 will be any easier than from, say, 14 to 17 (in fact, the opposite is more likely to be true). Don’t just stick with 8 or 11 because somebody else does so. Choose your vendor wisely and then balance what level of support the vendor provides with your own needs and make an informed decision.