Upgrade from 18.04?

[GregM]

Last time I tried to do an upgrade rather than a fresh install it was a disaster. It's been awhile. I think it was 12.04 to 14.

Have things gotten better in the upgrade dept or should I just do a fresh full install?

I'm pretty happy with 18.04, is there any real reason to try this?

Thanks
G

[claydoh]

18.04 is End Of Life, at least for the Plasma bits.
The Ubuntu OS underneath is still supported until 2023, so other than no security fixes on the desktop, the OS itself should be safe until then.

Upgrade vs clean? That is of course up to the person. Some will swear by clean installs, particularly with LTS to LTS upgrades.

I myself am an upgrade supporter, and have had no issues doing so in quite a long time.
My logic is this: If I plan on doing a clean install, I will back up my stuff properly, and then go ahead and try the upgrade. The worst that can happen is that I have to wipe it and do a clean install, which I planned to do anyway, so I am only losing the time it took to upgrade. The best that can happen is that it goes well, and I saved time not having to start everything from scratch.


Is it worth upgrading? Obviously if you are happy and have no issues, I can't argue with staying, outside of the potential security risks running an unsupported Plasma I personally think that Plasma 5.18 in is a fair bit better than the 5.12 in Bionic, but is it *that* much better?
Another consideration will be better hardware support using a more current OS, but again, if you have no issues in that regard currently...........

[GregM]

If I were to do an upgrade would that change my "do not update" setting for Firefox?

[claydoh]

If I were to do an upgrade would that change my "do not update" setting for Firefox?

I don't think it would. Settings, even system level ones, usually don't get changed by upgrading, just like normal updates don't.
At worst, you might see a dialog about any new configuration file that the upgrade wants to replace, and offer you to keep, replace, or view the differences. I don't think any apt pinning would be changed, but I really am not at all sure of this. And of course, being a config file, it may not be all that clear what the file is for or what the changes mean, though it usually is pretty clear what is going on.

[kenj70]

My in-place upgrade from 18.04 to 20.04 went great, no problems.

[GregM]

We used to live just out of Port Gamble.

[GreyGeek]

As a course of habit, after one bad experience doing an LTS to LTS upgrade, I always do a fresh install.
Also, using BTRFS makes it a breeze. If the upgrade is bad it takes only a few minutes to roll back to a previous snapshot, then to a fresh install.

[TwoFistedJustice]

When I upgraded from 18.04 to 20.04 my system functioned normally for about a month and then started having serious problems the likes of which I have never seen before. I ended up wiping my drive and starting fresh.

[kenj70]

We used to live just out of Port Gamble.

Hi Greg.

We have a number of retired friends who have moved to Arizona. My wife thinks the Pacific Northwest has the best weather of all - and so we won't be moving south. Here, mamma is happy and everyone is happy!

[GregM]

As a course of habit, after one bad experience doing an LTS to LTS upgrade, I always do a fresh install.
Also, using BTRFS makes it a breeze. If the upgrade is bad it takes only a few minutes to roll back to a previous snapshot, then to a fresh install.

What is "BTRFS" and how do I do it?
I would prefer to do a fresh install , but it's remembering all the stuff to move to the fresh install that's the bugger.
G

[GregM]

Ok I'm ready.
Got my backups done.

Since I have not done an upgrade in a very long time, how do you do it?
Is there somewhere to click or something from somewhere to download?

Thanks

[claydoh]

if you are not getting a prompt, or have dismissed it in the past, you can start the process manually from Krunner (alt-space):



https://kubuntu.org/news/kubuntu-20-...been-released/

[GregM]

It keeps saying Ubuntu not Kubuntu

[GregM]

Tried to update with the suggested command got this

greg@greg-OptiPlex-990:~$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Get:1 http://dl.google.com/linux/earth/deb stable InRelease [1,807 B]

Hit:2 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic InRelease
Get:3 https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com stable InRelease [4,317 B]
Err:1 http://dl.google.com/linux/earth/deb stable InRelease
The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 78BD65473CB3BD13

Hit:4 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates InRelease
Hit:5 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security InRelease
Hit:6 http://ppa.launchpad.net/bablu-boy/nutty.0.1/ubuntu bionic InRelease

Hit:7 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-backports InRelease
Err:3 https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com stable InRelease

The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY A8580BDC82D3DC6C

Reading package lists... Done

W: GPG error: http://dl.google.com/linux/earth/deb stable InRelease: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 78BD65473CB3BD13

E: The repository 'http://dl.google.com/linux/earth/deb stable InRelease' is no longer signed.

N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.

N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.

W: An error occurred during the signature verification. The repository is not updated and the previous index files will be used. GPG error: https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com stable InRelease: The fol
lowing signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY A8580BDC82D3DC6C

greg@greg-OptiPlex-990:~$ ^C

[claydoh]

Yes, it will say that. Always has, as far as I recall. The OS *is* Ubuntu, after all.
The upgrade tool does not differentiate between the different 'flavours', and they do not really provide separate desktop-specific tools.