Upgraded to 14.10 but still 14.04.2

Question

I wanted to upgrade my Ubuntu 14.04.2 to Ubuntu 15.10. I learned I first had to upgrade to 14.10 then to 15.04 and then finally to 15.10. In terminal I entered:

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

About 315 MB data was downloaded and text went on scrolling in the terminal window. At last the process wound up. I restarted system and ran in terminal:

lsb_release -a

and It gave the output:

LSB Version:    core-2.0-ia32:core-2.0-noarch:core-3.0-ia32:core-3.0-noarch:core-3.1-ia32:core-3.1-noarch:core-3.2-ia32:core-3.2-noarch:core-4.0-ia32:core-4.0-noarch:core-4.1-ia32:core-4.1-noarch:security-4.0-ia32:security-4.0-noarch:security-4.1-ia32:security-4.1-noarch
Distributor ID: Ubuntu             
Description:    Ubuntu 14.04.2

etc... I was shocked that it is not upgraded what should I do now to upgrade and what went wrong with me? Thanks!

Panther · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-30T15:00:29.840

First, 14.10 is beyond end of life and so it is going to be more difficult.

Second "dist-upgrade" does NOT upgrade ubuntu. (This is a fairly common misunderstanding, perhaps the option "dist-upgrade" is a bit misleading, perhaps dist-sync or some such would have been better).

From the man page: http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/vivid/man8/apt-get.8.html

dist-upgrade

       dist-upgrade in addition to performing the function of upgrade,
       also intelligently handles changing dependencies with new versions
       of packages; apt-get has a "smart" conflict resolution system, and
       it will attempt to upgrade the most important packages at the
       expense of less important ones if necessary. So, dist-upgrade
       command may remove some packages. The /etc/apt/sources.list file
       contains a list of locations from which to retrieve desired package
       files. See also apt_preferences(5) for a mechanism for overriding
       the general settings for individual packages.

You upgrade by running update manager

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/upgrade

And finally, it is going to take longer and be more error prone to upgrade this way. A fresh install is faster, more reliable, and will preserve your data in /home as long as you do not format the partition with /home on it.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuReinstallation

Since Hardy it is possible to reinstall Ubuntu without losing the content of the /home folder (the folder that contains program settings, internet bookmarks, emails and all your documents, music, videos and other user files). This can be done even if /home is not on a separate partition (which is the case by default if you did not manually separate it when installing Ubuntu originally). This tutorial can also be used to upgrade Ubuntu (eg 11.04 -> 12.04 from a 12.04 live-CD).

The other unspoken advantage of a fresh install is that you have the opportunity to test the new version of Ubuntu on your hardware before you upgrade. It is frustrating to upgrade via update manager and then discover you have a hardware problem , can leave you stuck re-installing and updating the old version.

And last, before you upgrade, upgrades can always fail, so back up your data first.

So you suggest to use update manager or fresh install. Okay then I am going to have a fresh install. But still I dont know what was the 315 mb stuff which the upgrade downloaded cause all my softwares were up to date> Thank you very much. I am doing all this for C++ debugger which has stopped working due to some reason in this distro and someone suggested me to install 15.10!!! — Rehan Ullah, Jul 30 '15 at 13:28
hard to guess. You must have had held packages or a full update required removal of packages as explained on the man page. — Panther, Jul 30 '15 at 13:30
Hard to know if upgrading is going to solve your origional problem or not. Another advantage of using the fresh install route is you can test your hardware before you upgrade. Perhaps you can test your other problem as well. — Panther, Jul 30 '15 at 13:32

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 30 '15 at 13:40

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade does not upgrade Ubuntu to the next version.

And it is generally not a good idea to upgrade 14.04.2 LTS to 14.10.

Ubuntu 15.10 has not been released yet. It can be used only for testing purposes.

I suggest keeping 14.04 LTS. Or you can do a fresh install of 15.04, if you are eager to have the newest version.

Upgraded to 14.10 but still 14.04.2

2 Answers2