[SOLVED] please help me make sense of this

[die.boer]

so if one wants to be on 26.04 LTS ,one can download the ISO from kubuntu ,and install it , right ?
but if you on 25.10 like me , you have to wait till august/october whatever for the official release , so it will "be stable"
so the ISO available right now is stable ?
that means if i want 26.04 now , i must do a fresh install?
excuse me but i am confused
PS: from what i've searched , i think the 26.04 ISO is a development release? if that's the case , why put it out there if it's not final ? (i'm coming from the view ,say if someone wants to try kubuntu ,go to the site and see the 'latest' release and install it,but it's the development release meaning still full of bugs. Wouldn't that put people off from kubuntu ? not realizing it's it's not a stable release ?)

[acheron]

Upgrades from 25.10 should be turned on in a few days, or maybe a week or so. It is not the stability of the ISO that is an issue, but instead of the upgrade process. Upgrading several 1,000 packages and in some cases migrating settings/configs is something that needs a little wider testing than can be done by just a handful of developers/testers on a relatively small number of systems. So upgrades are not immediately turned on and reports from people who do decide to force the upgrade are looked at, and if significant problems turn up they can be fixed before upgrades are turned on generally. For example for 25.04 it was found that some users who had i386 libraries installed from 3rd party steam/wine in some cases got broken installs, so updates were turned off and that fixed before turned on again.

Upgrades from LTS to LTS (e.g. 24.04 to 26.04) are the ones that have a longer period before upgrades are turn on. Several months in most cases. This is because users/institutions/businesses expect and depend on the LTS to LTS upgrade be super reliable and smooth, so the waiting and caution/evaluation period is much longer for that path

[conwaytwt]

If you are using the LTS version of Kubuntu (24.04) you are correct that you will not be presented the upgrade until after the first "point release" of Ubuntu / Kubuntu, which is normally several months away. Maybe not as late as October, but long enough that those of us NOT on LTS releases have worked out the niggling bugs.

Since you said you are running 25.10, you are NOT on the LTS track, so you should be presented the upgrade when the load balancing on the servers decide to present it to you. Probably days or hours from now. UNLESS a "show-stopper" bug turns up, in which case they will pause the roll-out. (I don't know of any -- but it has happened.)

ALL THAT SAID, you have been able to upgrade from 25.10 to 26.04 ANY TIME (since it has existed as a release late last year) with a terminal command.

I hope that helps.

[die.boer]

Upgrades from 25.10 should be turned on in a few days, or maybe a week or so. It is not the stability of the ISO that is an issue, but instead of the upgrade process. Upgrading several 1,000 packages and in some cases migrating settings/configs is something that needs a little wider testing than can be done by just a handful of developers/testers on a relatively small number of systems. So upgrades are not immediately turned on and reports from people who do decide to force the upgrade are looked at, and if significant problems turn up they can be fixed before upgrades are turned on generally. For example for 25.04 it was found that some users who had i386 libraries installed from 3rd party steam/wine in some cases got broken installs, so updates were turned off and that fixed before turned on again.

Upgrades from LTS to LTS (e.g. 24.04 to 26.04) are the ones that have a longer period before upgrades are turn on. Several months in most cases. This is because users/institutions/businesses expect and depend on the LTS to LTS upgrade be super reliable and smooth, so the waiting and caution/evaluation period is much longer for that path

ok i understand that , what i don't understand is

It is not the stability of the ISO that is an issue

is the 26.04 ISO stable then?

[die.boer]

with a terminal command.

yes i did sudo do-release-upgrade but "no new release available"
sudo do-release-upgrade -d is not what i want
but anyway ,good to hear i can have it in a few days/week ...i cant bloody wait lol

[die.boer]

what i'm trying to understand is , is potential new users presented with this
https://kubuntu.org/download/
and
https://kubuntu.org/news/kubuntu-26-04-release-notes/
where it doesn't state anywhere that it is a developer release ?

[Schwarzer Kater]

… because the current .iso is no "developer" release anymore, but the official .0-release. Thus it can be downloaded officially from the Kubuntu website.

Release-upgrading (sudo do-release-upgrade -d) has still to be done the "developer" way at the moment (= inofficially), because - as acheron explained - the testing for the release-upgrade process from 25.10 directly to 26.04 is not finished yet.

[die.boer]

ok , so if i understand this correctly , if you are on 24.04 LTS you have to wait a few months ...or do a fresh install with the 26.04 ISO ?

[Snowhog]

I believe that is correct. The ISO itself, which is now available, has been tested (sufficiently) for use with 'new' installs. Upgrading from 24.04 LTS to 26.04 LTS has not been sufficiently tested across enough platforms to make the devs comfortable in letting existing 24.04 LTS users upgrade. That is why they wait until the first point release: 26.04.1; before the trigger for existing 24.04 LTS users is seen on their PCs.

[die.boer]

I believe that is correct. The ISO itself, which is now available, has been tested (sufficiently) for use with 'new' installs. Upgrading from 24.04 LTS to 26.04 LTS has not been sufficiently tested across enough platforms to make the devs comfortable in letting existing 24.04 LTS users upgrade. That is why they wait until the first point release: 26.04.1; before the trigger for existing 24.04 LTS users is seen on their PCs.

well that explains it to me clearly , thanks !
ps: what got me confused is that i read somewhere the 26.04 ISO is a developer release