Frankly, Ubuntu upgrades donāt work. I have yet to meet a person that never had an issue with Ubuntu upgrades.
Therefore, it is recommended that one backs up everything needed (most of the time /home is sufficient to back up), then does a completely fresh installation of the newer OS version, after wiping the old one and then finally restoring the backup made in the first step.
iām glad you posted that. i was about to agree with @Akito that a fresh install sounded like it would be easier all things considered. it might also be a good idea to consider moving to 20.04 or at least 18.04 instead of 16.04 which will go beyond regular end of life early next year.
here is @abhishekās guide to a fresh install of 20.04:
Iāve lost count of the number of upgrades Iāve done between releasesā¦ e.g. from a rolling release to an LTS - one system I had started life as 16.10, updated to 17.04, 17.10, 18.04 LTS etcā¦ most recently, on about 5 different computers, 18.04.4 to 20.04 (and right now Iām doing an 18.04.5 to 20.04.1 ādo-release-upgradeā). Iām pretty sure the laptop I was using at work back in 2014, started off with Ubuntu 12.10, then updated to 13.04, 13.10, then 14.04 LTSā¦ kept going till 2015 sometime (I didnāt bother updating to non LTS 15.04 - these days Iām mostly sticking to LTS releases).
However - having said this - let me admit, Iāve never updated from 14.04 to 16.04ā¦ in 2016 I was mostly using elementary OS, and theyāre notorious for being unable to do ANY release upgrades, and they admit it - openly - itās on their download sites and readmes etcā¦ I was running Freya back then - and couldnāt upgrade to Loki releaseā¦ been the same with every releaseā¦ If youāre running elementary OS 5.1 Hera, and you want 6.0 Odin - you have to wipe your Hera and install Odin āafreshā, which kinda stinksā¦
Also - having said the above - Iāve run into dependancy nightmares during updates and upgrades, ESPECIALLY if Iāve added PPAs to my apt config (I do not add PPAs to my systems anymore) - and found resolving these issues more complex and time consuming than a fresh re-install of the O/Sā¦
Thatās weird. Even my friend who is an avid Kubuntu user for so many years, always does a fresh install on each new release, because every previous upgrade of his failed miserably.
Well, maybe there is a difference in this aspect between the different Ubuntu derivatives? Maybe the DE already can break stuff, I dont know.
It probably has lots to do with how much and what type of third party software you have installed. If you have a lot of custom modifications, I can imagine things breaking much easier and faster.
One thing I know thatās broken about upgrading Ubuntu Server releases - e.g. 14.04 to 16.04 - the names of the NIC devices got changed, e.g. eth0 becomes ens160 - and it breaks your system - e.g. if your server is in a data centre and you donāt have an iLOM youāre up sh!t creek (and you hope and pray the data centre is in the same town!), or a VM on ESX - you gotta tweak it on the VMware console - and thatās a real PITA - e.g. no copy and paste or anythingā¦
I am currently a Ubuntu 18.04 LTS novice getting used to the environment, which I have started liking it too (wondering, why did I ever chose earlier to go to Windows at all?). I have also successfully installed a couple of need based packages of my liking based on articles on the internet in the recent past, apart from study of the Linux Manual. My experience so far has been exhilarating!
Very recently my computer has started flashing the availability of Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS Upgrade. Based on your experience as stated above, I am likely to confront upgrading issues with some of the packages I have chosen for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, I am sure. This is like getting invited for a debugging experience (may be even a harrowing one), each time you go for an Upgrade.
If and when I decide to go for (may not be in the very near future) Ubuntu 20.04.1, does it mean that I have to go through the rigmarole of once again re-installing some of the need based non-compatible packages of Ubuntu 18.04? That would be really unproductive! Isnāt there an easier way out?
If I were you, I would first back up everything, entirely. There are a lot of explanations in this forum on backups, already, so you will find enough material to go through.
Once I confirmed that my backup is working as I want it to work, I would just go ahead and upgrade. If there are any issues, I would fix tiny ones, but if I would find bigger ones, I would just restore the backup and therefore effectively revert the OS to the exact pre-upgrade state.
After reverting the upgrade i.e. restoring from backup, I would write installation scripts for the programs that are not easy to install on Ubuntu. I would also check if dependencies are fine in the new Ubuntu (sometimes dependencies can also be too new, not only too old). If the dependencies are fine, I would propably freshly install the OS, then install everything neatly and use these installation scripts I created earlier. If the dependencies are not fine, I would wrap the apps that are harder to install on Ubuntu, in Docker images, too.
That said, it all depends on your setup and what you are actually trying to do. Above recommendation is just a generic template and needs to be adjusted to each situation.
I shall think over the upgrade issue and decide after a while, because I find that several hassles are being highlighted in the Forum by (new) users who have recently installed Ubuntu 20.04.1 (apart from the āsnapā controversy). May be one has to wait for a while for the latest upgrade to stabilize further. Backing up coupled with a fresh clean install, to my mind and in my situation, appears to be the safest and most viable option. I hope I am proved right eventually.
Thank you for your observations and recommendations made.
Thanks! However, I never had many issues with upgrades at home: I switched from Suse to Kubuntu in 2014 when 14.04 was the current LTS and I have always done the release upgrades when a new LTS became available. I changed my computer last year without doing a fresh install, just switched the hard drive.
At work though, I have known some issues because for some policy, upgrades and updates couldnāt always be done in a timely fashion.
The only thing, I can complain about with the current upgrade was that at the final step, it didnāt inform me that I had to reboot manually. The screen just went blank with a blinking cursor. I left it like that for 15 minutes or so and when nothing happened, I (slightly panicked) just pressed the power button and the new system just came up fine.
Iāve done the 18.04.x to 20.04.x upgrade āwaltzā 6 times on 5 different computersā¦
Did one from 18.04.4 to 20.04.0 with āsudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade && sudo do-release-upgradeā in late April - was smooth asā¦ no dramasā¦ so did it everywhere else tooā¦
Why 6 times on 5 computers?
The most recent was was clean install of 18.04.5, I installed the packages I need that wonāt install on 20.04.x (mainly Checkpoint SNX CLI VPN client and its dependancies) upgraded to 20.04.1 - it was painless - the re-install was because I decided to go back and do encryption of ā/ā from the installer (instead of using veracrypt), as I travel with this laptop, and donāt want sensitive data to fall into the wrong handsā¦
So - itās been my experience that 18.04.5 to 20.04.1 is painless and issue freeā¦
BTW - I only run the default Ubuntu gnome DEā¦ nothing elseā¦
- cāest moi!