How to upgrade from 14.04 LTS

[jglen490]

The btrfs, et al notwithstanding, I'll do with 16.04 what I did with 14.04 - wait for 16.04.1 ....

[Tom_ZeCat]

Some report success, some report problems, some report failure. IMO, it is always best to back up your data, which is never a wrong thing to do, and do a fresh install from an md5sum (or sha512sum - which ever checksum the site provided) checked ISO, burn it with verification, then install. For sure, it is generally quicker to do an install (20 min to an hour, depending on how many additional apps or data you need to reinstall) than it is to debug an upgrade. IF a fresh install gives you problems most likely it is a bad ISO or burn.

I still haven't upgraded from the wonderfully stable 14.04 LTS, but when I do, I'm making a full Clonezilla image of my drive first. Then I can try doing an upgrade. If the new version is unstable or I don't like it for any reason, I can always just re-image my drive back to 14.04. A fresh install would be a crap load of work for me because I've got this thing so customized in settings and applications. Maybe later when I don't have so much work, I could do a fresh install.

[GreyGeek]

I don't believe anyone ranted against the Plasma "metro" look than I did, but Kubuntu had too many positive attributes to let metro nullify, so I upgraded to it a couple months ago. I was pleasantly surprised. Everything 14.04 is noted for is there, except Plasma4, but on my six year old Acer 16.04 is easily twice as fast as 14.04. The latest Plasma upgrade fixed some pseudo app crash problems (crash dialog appears but the app didn't crash).

Kubuntu 16.04 LTS has put off my need to replace this Acer. Considering that my wife has had two major surgeries during the last year that has pushed our budget between a rock and a hard place the increase in speed came just in time.

[Tom_ZeCat]

Cool, I'll likely give 16.04 LTS a try at some point, though not immediately.

[mr_raider]

How is gaming support on 16.04? On 14.04 I have a lot of steam and GOG.com games installed. Don't want to loose them.

[GreyGeek]

On 14.04 my Steam application, Universe Sandbox^2, ran slowly and I had to turn off the particles in order for the planets to move smoothly in orbit around the Sun. On 16.04 not only do the planets revolve smoothly with full particles, ALL the collision simulations do as well. On 14.04 I couldn't even run them because they lagged so much they brought my Acer to its knees.

[jglen490]

Downloaded 16.04.1 this afternoon. sha256sum checked out good on the downloaded iso. Been looking forward to this! Looks like tomorrow will be a backup and install day.

While I would like to try the 14.04.4 to 16.04.1 upgrade path, I know I'll have success with a clean install on my / partition, with backup protection on /home data.

Fingers crossed.

[GreyGeek]

IMO and experience a clean install is usually better than a version upgrade.

[Tom_ZeCat]

IMO and experience a clean install is usually better than a version upgrade.

It's been mixed results for me. The version upgrade from 13.04 to 14.04 went perfectly without a hitch. From 14.04 LTS to 16.04 LTS was a complete failure in that the OS didn't even run at all. It was worth a shot because my Kubuntu is so customized that it takes me a lot of time to get it all set up with the settings that I like and the programs I install.

I've upgraded (via an install from scratch) on my desktop, but not on my laptop yet. My laptop will take even more time because, unlike my desktop, I use VirtualBox to run Windows 7. With my desktop, I KVM to a separate Windows 7 PC.

[jglen490]

Well, got it done. It works, and all the stock stuff is there. All my /home stuff made it through just fine.

The stock look and feel REALLY sucks. I'll be looking for better themes, etc.

[GreyGeek]

I switched to breeze oxygen. Much nicer

[jglen490]

Yep, it's getting better. I grabbed a couple of themes, but ...

Right now I'm using a slightly customized Oxygen. Still a bit dark, but at least not so boxy/square.

Just need to re-install a few more things (Clementine, Thunderbird/Lightning, etc.)

[piotrlg]

I have 14.04 LTS and some PPA added with backports (digikam, etc). What should I consider in that matter before making upgrade? Turn of those ppa?

Regards
Piotr

[dequire]

I have 14.04 LTS and some PPA added with backports (digikam, etc). What should I consider in that matter before making upgrade? Turn of those ppa?

3rd party PPA's will be disabled during the upgrade process to protect the sanctity of the upgrade. This is done by the upgrade script placing an "#" character at the beginning of the PPA line in your etc/apt/sources.list file, along with a comment that the PPA was disabled due to the upgrade. I would back-up and rename this file prior to upgrading and, once the (hopefully) successful upgrade is complete, copy and paste your 3rd party PPA's back into your sources.list file AFTER you have made a backup of the new, default sources.list file in 16.04. Finally, you'll have to change the PPA's to match the name of your new Kubuntu release (ex. replace the word "trusty" in your PPA lines with "xenial").

You can easily do this manually line by line, or open the file in Kate (as Root) and use the 'Replace' option, or use the excellent Y PPA Manager app to do so. Now just reboot and re-install all those 3rd party apps. In the rare event that an app can't be installed or can't be found, go to the Launchpad page of that particular PPA and verify that the PPA has been updated by the maintainers to work with Xenial. If not, remove the PPA and look for an alternative.

Please keep in mind...without fail...Always keep a backup copy of the originally-installed sources.list file and a backup of your modified one. Rename them something like backup_orig_sources_list_file.txt and keep it in your Home directory in an easy to find location, or on a thumbdrive, etc.

[jglen490]

dequire - couldn't agree more. I keep those things that have to be changed during an update from those things that I prefer to not change during an update. My / is on one partition, and my /home is on another. Plus I keep my videos, photos, music, etc. on a third partition (/home/multimedia) on a completely separate drive. Then I have started (going to 14.04 and to 16.04) doing a manual fresh install with a format on root only and a total backup on the rest. A lot of work, but well worth the results.