David M Williams
Tuesday, 17 March 2009 11:47
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
Ubuntu 9.04, Jaunty Jackalope, is being released next month. What does this mean for your existing Ubuntu setup? Fear not, here is the super simple way to go forwards without reformatting, reinstalling or losing data in any way.
If you’ve ever used that alternate operating system, Microsoft Windows, you’ll know that upgrading isn’t always effortless.
If you want to move from, say, Windows XP to Windows Vista (or the upcoming Windows 7) you have to deal with driver and software version conflicts, limitations on upgrade paths due to different versions and all sorts of things.
It’s not so with Linux, and given the regular twice-annually release cycle of Ubuntu, it’s handy to know how to move up to the newest version with a minimum of fuss. What’s more, you can even keep working away while the upgrade happens.
The key is dead simple. Click the System/Administration menu, then select Software Sources. Click the “Updates” tab. At the bottom you will see a section titled “Release upgrade” with a single option, “Show new distribution releases.” Make sure this is set to “Normal releases” and close the window.
Next click System/Administration again, but this time choose Update Manager. Press Check.
If there are any updates, press Install Updates to download and install them. Press Check again when this is complete.
Update Manager will now notify you that a new distribution release is available, with an ‘Upgrade’ button. Press that and you follow the prompts. Essentially, you will be asked if you want to continue and told how many packages will be removed and how many will be added during the upgrade process.
The upgrade steps may take some time to complete but once they have finished reboot your computer and lo-and-behold you will be staring at Jaunty’s login screen. Your computer has been upgraded to the latest Ubuntu release but without any loss of data or settings. No need to download ISO images, burn to disk, repartition drives or muck around with anything else at all.
That’s the visual way. If you’re a command line buff it’s just as easy and I’ll tell you over the page.
