Good news for Ubuntu users, Canonical has released Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on 23rd April 2020. As it is an LTS (Long Term Support) release so ubuntu users will keep getting updates and support till April 2025. So, it is worth to upgrade your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS desktop to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa).
In this article we will demonstrate how to upgrade Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to 20.04 LTS. There are two ways to do it either via command line or GUI (Graphical Interface). To complete the upgrade smoothly, a stable internet is required on your Ubuntu system.
Upgrade Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to 20.04 LTS via Command Line
We strongly recommend please the take backup of your existing Ubuntu 18.04, may be on some external drive.
Also Read : How to Use TimeShift to Backup and Restore Ubuntu Linux
Before start upgrading, let’s take a notw of existing Ubuntu Version, open the terminal and run below command,
pkumar@LinuxTechi:~$ cat /etc/lsb-release
We will get the output of above command something like below,
Let’s deep dive into upgradation steps
Step 1) Apply all updates of installed packages
Rub below apt command to install all the updates of installed packages,
pkumar@LinuxTechi:~$ sudo apt update pkumar@LinuxTechi:~$ sudo apt upgrade -y
Once all the updates are installed including the kernel then reboot your system
pkumar@LinuxTechi:~$ sudo reboot
Step 2) Remove unused Kernels and install ‘update-manager-core’
Once your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS desktop is available after reboot, then it is recommended to remove unused kernels to free up the space from /boot partition, run beneath command:
pkumar@LinuxTechi:~$ sudo apt --purge autoremove
Execute below command to install “update-manager-core“, as it is required for upgrade, though on most of the systems it should be installed by default. In case it is not installed run below command,
pkumar@LinuxTechi:~$ sudo apt install update-manager-core -y
Step 3) Start Upgrade Process
Run following command to view whether new 20.04 LTS version is available for your system.
pkumar@LinuxTechi:~$ sudo do-release-upgrade
If, in the above command’s output, you got a message that “There is no development version of an LTS available” then we can force the above command by passing the parameter “-d” to look for the new latest LTS version.
Now run the command to initiate the upgrade procedure,
pkumar@LinuxTechi:~$ sudo do-release-upgrade -d
During upgrade procedure, it will prompt you couple of times to type “y” to update package repositories and sometime “enter” to confirm to proceed with upgrade,
Once the upgrade process is completed successfully then we will get following message
Above output confirms that upgrade is completed, upgrade tool prompted us to press ‘y’ to restart the system.
Step 4) Verify Upgrade
Once the system boots after the upgrade, open the terminal type following to verify the Ubuntu version,
pkumar@LinuxTechi:~$ cat /etc/lsb-release
Another way to verify the Ubuntu version, Go to Settings and then choose About
This confirms that we have successfully upgrade our Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to latest Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.
Upgrade Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to 20.04 LTS via GUI
Note: The first important task is to take the backup of your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS desktop.
Step 1) Apply Updates of installed packages and reboot
Search “Updater” from search dash and access it by clicking on its icon,
If the updates are available, then we will get the following screen , click on ” Install Now”
Once all the updates are installed, reboot your system once.
Step 2) Start Upgrade Process
Once the system is available after reboot, from the search dash look for “Software & Updates” and then click on its Icon,
From the Updates Tab, set “For long-term support versions” via “Notify me of a new Ubuntu version” drop down menu.
If no upgrade appears, then type “ALT+F2“, enter the command as “update-manager -c -d” and hit enter
In next screen, we will get the following , which says that Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is available for upgrade.
Click on “upgrade” to initiate the upgrade procedure, it will prompt you to enter your user’s credentials.
In the next window, choose “Upgrade“,
Now follow the screen instructions to complete the upgrade procedure, once it is upgraded successfully, it will prompt you to restart the system.
Click on “Restart Now”
Step 3) Verify Ubuntu version after upgrade
Once your Ubuntu system boots up after upgrade, Login and verify Ubuntu version:
From the search tab look for “Settings” and then choose “About”
Above confirms that we have successfully upgrade our Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to 20.04 LTS. That’s all from this article. Your feedback and comments are most welcome.
I upgraded, but certain applications don’t work so I downgraded again.
PgAdmin4 is not supported.
If you use GSConnect. No go in Fossa.
So I reverted back to 19.10
I can’t upgraded ubuntu
sudo do-release-upgrade -d
Sprawdzanie dostępności nowego wydania Ubuntu
Please install all available updates for your release before upgrading.
Make “sudo apt-get install dist-upgrades” first
I upgraded but I’m unable to boot its flash error message
failed to start load kernel modules
Worked perfectly.
Thanks
I’ve tried the steps on the website,but it keeps coming with:
“Please install all available updates for your release before upgrading.”
Step 1 command should be: sudo apt-get upgrade
Using that command, these instructions worked for my upgrade.
Since Ubuntu 16.04 LTS release, we can use “apt” command in place of “apt-get”. So ‘apt upgrade -y’ should work from Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
thank you very much, i was able to upgrade from Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to 20.04 LTS successfully and did not loose any of my files … worked perfectly
Sir, I got stuck on login screen after entering password on login screen , i get below message:
Oh no! Something has gone wrong. A problem has occurred and system can’t recover. Please contact a system administrator.
Any help is appreciated.
stucked on this error:
cannot upgrade
Your python3 install is corrupted. Please fix the ‘/usr/bin/python3’
symlink
Same here, but one which were upgraded from 18.04 LTS to 19.04 upgraded perfect to 20.04 LTS, another was tried upgraded from 18.04 LTS to 20.04 LTS went bad like above.
Oh no! Something has gone wrong. A problem has occurred and system can’t recover. Please contact a system administrator.
In the beginning I was able to get through earlier kernel and dkpg commands surgested by system ran for a long time with at lot of Setting up …. but now it is White Screen with the tekst Oh no! Something has gone wrong. A problem has occurred and system can’t recover. Please contact a system administrator.
Wish I knew the name of SysAdm
If you wanna try upgrade your 18.04 LTS to 20.04 LTS then upgrade from 18.04 LTS to 19.04 and then from 19.04 to 20.04 LTS.
News from above Frank, after many boots via the power button I got through to the textbased recovery GUI. and got a root prompt.
I did the best I know and in the last command from my below history it ended up asking me if I want to continue with the new release and replied fearless Y, default was N. After a boot I am running 20.04 LTS.
Took a RJ45 to the router and fired service network-manager start. At some point of time -> start with that
iwlist scan revealed some info on Wifi did something with iwconfig and parameter SSID and password (need to practice on connecting to wifi command line)
The history I was able to retreive:
apt-get -f install
dpkg –configure -a
apt –purge autoremove
dpkg –configure -a
apt install update-manager-core -y
dpkg –configure -a
apt install update-manager-core -y
dpkg –configure -a
do-release-upgrade
vi /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades
do-release-upgrade
dpkg –configure -a
do-release-upgrade
apt install update-manager-core -y
do-release-upgrade
dpkg –configure -a
do-release-upgrade
dpkg –configure -a
apt install update-manager-core -y
dpkg –configure -a
ls /var/log/dpkg.log
ls -l /var/log/dpkg.log
cat /var/log/dpkg.log
cat /var/log/dpkg.log | more
dpkg –configure -a
Thank you for publishing this. It worked flawlessly
It work really nice, thanks
I used the GUI instructions and it worked perfectly! It took less than 1h to upgrade, no files seem lost so far. And I finally have sound again.
Thank you very much, i was able to upgrade from Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to 20.04 LTS successfully via command line and it worked flawlessly.
Your instructions were flawless, many thanks!
Hi Pradeep, when I run
sudo do-release-upgrade
I get
There is no development version of an LTS available.
To upgrade to the latest non-LTS develoment release
set Prompt=normal in /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades.
I dont have a dev environment as your can notice the output of lsb_release
LSB Version: core-9.20170808ubuntu1-noarch:printing-9.20170808ubuntu1-noarch:security-9.20170808ubuntu1-noarch
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS
Release: 18.04
Codename: bionic
what is wrong? Thanks
i’m getting the following error messages;
Checking for a new Ubuntu release
Please install all available updates for your release before upgrading.
Please apply all the available updates first then try to upgrade.
i am also getting the same error , even though upgraded all updated using sudo apt-get update && apt-get upgrade still i am facing error
Checking for a new Ubuntu release
Please install all available updates for your release before upgrading.
Did you find a fix for the same?
Hi! It has been a very good post but I make an stupidity I did not backup.
I had Xubuntu 18.04 as a guest on a W10 Vbox. My Insternet is very slow so I start the release-upgrade late night and went to sleep and when I checked what was going on, W10 had rebooted.
After that I do not get the gui, I only get the terminal doing .
Do you thing on any help?
It works thanks you
An unresolvable problem occurred while calculating the upgrade.
This was likely caused by:
* Unofficial software packages not provided by Ubuntu
Please use the tool ‘ppa-purge’ from the ppa-purge
package to remove software from a Launchpad PPA and
try the upgrade again.
If none of this applies, then please report this bug using the
command ‘ubuntu-bug ubuntu-release-upgrader-core’ in a terminal. If
you want to investigate this yourself the log files in
‘/var/log/dist-upgrade’ will contain details about the upgrade.
Specifically, look at ‘main.log’ and ‘apt.log’.
Worked perfectly
Hi Pradeep!!
Thanks for providing this excellent, to the point, with screenshots and commands, a very helpful artical . . .
I updated UBUNTU 18.04 LTS to 20.04 LTS without any problem . . .over WiFi 2Mbps first I updated 18.04 LTS it took around half an hour.
after restart, I used SOFTWARE AND UPDATES here no upgrade appeared so I used >> then type “ALT+F2“, enter the command as “update-manager -c -d” and hit enter. . .
now it’s great to use 20.04 LTS all programmes BLENDER, MESHEYE, GIMP, MUSIC, WiFi are performing well and running excellent . .
Thanks!!
The upgrade went surprisingly well and the server seems to be working correctly but when I try to SSH (Putty) into the server I get:
Couldn’t agree a key exchange algorithm (available: curve25519-sha256, curve25519-libssh.org.ecdh-sha3-nistp256,ecdh-sha2-nistp384, endh-sha2-nistp521, diffie-hellman-group16-sha512,diffie-hellman-group18,diffie-hellman-group14-sha256)
Any ideas please?
To resolve this issue, upgrade your ssh server and ssh-client (putty)
Hi all, Is there anyway to upgrade Ubuntu from 18 to 20 without user interaction. Completely from a shell script. I am trying to avoid user interaction at this command
sudo do-release-upgrade -d
I updated successfully but got a message saying the Apache2 failed to start, then when I check NGINX, and it was active. I assume the default server is NGINX after upgrading instead of Apache2, should I stop NGINX and use Apache2, or leave NGINX as of now? If I leave NGINX, should I ignore the message about failed Apache2? Thank you so much!