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I have recently spent a lot of work and built my 14.04 ubuntu desktop to be "perfect" for me. Should I really do a distribution upgrade to 16.04, because I can?

I am a newbie and do not want to lose any of my work. As I see it I am able to use 14.04 for three more years, so what is the hype about 16.04!?! I hope this question is not silly, because as I see it you should not upgrade unless you do not need to.

Then why does Ubuntu have so many LTS distributions going on at the same time? Why not have a one at a time LTS to finishing with the next LTS?

Atle Stray
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  • Well, officially, the "current" LTS is 16.04 –  May 04 '16 at 23:17
  • If everything is good and you don't need anything new ... not running into packages that need newer libs or stuff... then I would stick with 14.04. I moved to 16.04 and have questioned my decision. But I run tons of stuff and had to fix a lot of it to get it working again .. still can't get my website to work again. – John Orion May 04 '16 at 23:20
  • Yous should probably stick with 14 LTS. Maybe by the time 18 LTS comes out you'll have found some things you can't do then you can consider upgrading. – pfeiffep May 05 '16 at 01:46
  • This may clear up some of the things that lead to your questions: https://askubuntu.com/questions/16366/whats-the-difference-between-a-long-term-support-release-and-a-normal-release – David Foerster May 05 '16 at 18:29

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They support the previous LTS releases for the exact reason you mentioned in your question: people create a stable environment they want to keep. If an LTS was only supported for 2 years, there wouldn't be much advantage to an LTS, and people would have to upgrade all the time to continue to receive support. It's also helpful to businesses that may have software that only works on, say, 14.04.

I feel like you've pretty much already answered your own question. You say you have every reason to stay with what you have and that you just want to upgrade for fun. Unless you have an actual reason for 16.04, don't risk the upgrade and potential hassles, inconveniences, bugs and breakages just "because [you] can."

TL;DR:
Don't upgrade to 16.04 unless the need arises. You already have what you want. No need to ruin it.

TheWanderer
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If you value stability of a system, then by all means stick with 14.04 for now. You can always install Virtual Box and try 16.04 LTS there, which is what I do. Sooner or later you have to face the fact that Ubuntu has switched to new init system, systemd as well as introduced new type of packaging format , snappy. You may want to start learning those slowly in Virtual Box without upgrading. That's mostly what's the "whole hype" is all about

Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy
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