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I have been an Ubuntu user for at least 10 years. And I've been through a lot of updates. I am currently using 18.04 (18.04.5) on my PC and I was waiting for the popup message saying "a newer version is available", but it never popped up.

So I visited this page and did the process (ran sudo do-release-upgrade -d), but every time I entered the command it said:

Upgrades to the development release are only available from the latest supported release.

Why is it saying that?

Zanna
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IamKAKE
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    Just drop the -d from the command. That flag was only useful at the time that blog was posted. – Dan Jun 11 '21 at 12:17

3 Answers3

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The -d flag bumps you to the development release allowing you to bump before a release has been officially opened for upgrade.

The upgrade from 18.04 to 20.04 is now officially opened so -d doesn't apply to that release-upgrade (it did straight after 20.04's release hence the blog notice, until it was declared stable thus wasn't required from then on).

Upgrades to the development release are only available from the latest supported release.

Now the -d means bumping from 21.04 (ie. latest release) to the development or impish release (what will be 21.10 on release), but you're not on 21.04 - thus the error message you received.

--- Additional detail

Why is -d necessary for a LTS release?

The upgrade taps are documented as being turned after the release of 20.04.1 and the Ubuntu Release Team considers it fully stable for existing users. Many people however don't want to wait for this, so the -d allows them to upgrade anytime after 20.04 was released, even before 20.04.1's release.. or in the days between 20.04.1 being released (date of release being the ISO release for new installs) and the taps being turned on for upgrades (usually 2-5 days later).

guiverc
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I ran into the same problem and dropped the -d

Then I got the message:

"Please install all available updates for your release before upgrading."

I had updated but I had forgotten the 3rd command below. After the "apt dist-upgrade" I was able to upgrade to 20 from 18.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade -y
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo do-release-upgrade
Jim Ladd
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  • When running apt-get update, I get: "The repository 'at.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hirsute Release' no longer has a Release file.". The advice from here helped: I changed URLs from "at.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu" to "old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu". Afterwards, the commands from your answer worked. – Matthias Braun Sep 23 '23 at 12:12
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The thing with the -d flag is true for when the new LTS is so new that it not yet has been released for upgrades. This happens usually 3 months after the first release, i.e. in June more or less, guiverc described that in his post above.

Well 20.04 is much older now, so this is not the reason.

The reason must be that you are using a 32-bit version of Ubuntu which stopped being upgraded further, 18.04 is the last supported LTS for 32 bit.

You only have the choice to reinstall 20.04 as 64-bit system which is possible for basically all PCs from ca 2007 onwards. To check this boot from a 64-bit live stick and if it boots ok you are ready to go. You should take a complete backup before that. From there you can restore your data after the reinstall with the 64-bit version.

Hope that helps

tobalur
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