If you have an unattended Ubuntu desktop or server running an old or non-long-term release, it’s time to upgrade to the current generally available release. Follow this guide to upgrade from End Of Life to General Availability.

You can check what release of Ubuntu you have installed by running the command below.

lsb_release -a

If you encounter an error while running apt update or installing anything using APT, run the command below to modify the sources.list to the corrected source list.

sudo sed -i -e 's/archive.ubuntu.com\|security.ubuntu.com/old-releases.ubuntu.com/g' /etc/apt/sources.list

We need to install all the updates for the current release before upgrading to another release.

sudo apt update

sudo apt full-upgrade

Certain upgrades need a restart before proceeding with the other step, and this will most likely be when you have a new kernel release installed with the updates.

Upgrading to the latest GA release.

Keep in mind that some third-party repositories might not immediately support the latest release. Based on the support cycle of that repository, there may or may not be a repository for a certain release of Ubuntu. Some software developers add support to the latest release a month or two later. You might need to do research before performing the next steps.

Now all you need to do is run the release upgrade.

sudo do-release-upgrade

If there are third-party repositories added to your sources.list file (list of repositories to install/update software from), the upgrade process will prompt you to continue. Press Enter and let the process continue. You can add the third-party repositories back after the process is complete.

Once the upgrade tool performs some pre-processes, it will print a summary of all the changes that will be done if the upgrade is performed. It asks the user for final confirmation of the upgrade. Press Y and Enter to continue the upgrade.

If this process runs smoothly, you need to reboot to apply all the changes, and you should have the latest release of Ubuntu.

If this helped you, let me know in the comments below.