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I upgraded from 16.04 to 17.04 with a slight problem. I was not able to do anything when I got to the login screen. All I saw was the login-screen, no cursor, and the text cursor blinked a few times and stopped. I read on a forum about someone who had a similar problem, and followed their advice to upgrade right away to 17.10 from 17.04 without trying to fix the login problem.

So I entered recovery mode and started upgrading to 17.10. This was not completely pain free either. I had to set up an ethernet interface, run dhcp and even change the dns-server manually. But after this it started downloading.

Halfway through it gets to around "setting up base files" and just sits there for an hour. I figured it froze and restarted.

Now when I enter recovery mode and run dpkg I get the message 

An upgrade from 'artful' to 'zesty' is no not supported with this tool

but that's not what I'm trying to do. apt-get update only wants to remove some files and dpkg --configure -a and apt-get install -f both get stuck on setting up base files (9.6ubuntu102).

I don't remember exactly what I did but I was also able to see what files where not installed, and there were a lot of files from the unity package. Doesn't 17.10 use GNOME instead?

Zanna
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Cortex
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    You can not do that (skip releases) See https://askubuntu.com/questions/34430/can-i-skip-over-releases-when-upgrading . You are best off with a fresh install at this point. – Panther Nov 07 '17 at 10:42

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Fresh installation often easiest and fastest

It is often easiest and fastest to make a fresh installation instead of upgrading from a previous version. This is 'particularly true', when you would have to upgrade via several steps (not from the previous version, but from a version further back).

  • Backup your personal files.

  • Install a fresh system.

  • Install the additional program packages that you remember (that you need).

  • Copy back your personal files from the backup. It helps (but is not necessary) to use a separate data partition for your personal data.

  • Later on, when you need another program package, install it. This way you will get rid of old program packages, that you will not use.

sudodus
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