How to Upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS was released on April 23, 2020 and codename is Focal Fossa. It will be supported by five years of app and security updates. This page shows you how to upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS from Ubuntu 18.04 or Ubuntu 19.10.

Prerequisites#

• It’s relatively simple to upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 from either Ubuntu 18.04 or Ubuntu 19.10. If you running any previous version, you must first upgrade to Ubuntu 18.04 or 19.10.
• You need to be login as root or a user with sudo privileges.

Step 1 – Make a Backup of Your Data#

At first, its always recommended to take backup of your data before starting upgrade of your OS. If you are running on a virtual machine then you can take complete system snapshot so it can be restore if anything goes wrong.

Step 2 – Upgrade all installed packages#

At this stage, you have backup, and it is best practice to update all currently installed packages to their latest versions.

Before going ahead, check whether there are any packages marked as hold on your system. Held back marked packages cannot be automatically installed, upgraded, or removed. This may cause issues during the upgrade process. Run the below commands:

sudo apt-mark showhold

If you found any packages with on hold then you should unhold it by typing:

sudo apt-mark unhold package_name

Again, index apt list and upgrade all installed packages:

sudo apt update

sudo apt upgrade

You must reboot when ubuntu linux kernel gets updated:

sudo reboot

Perform a major version upgrade of the installed packages:

sudo apt full-upgrade

It may remove some unused packages. Run below command to remove all installed dependencies which are no longer needed.

sudo apt --purge autoremove

Step 3 – Upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)#

It’s a very simple process to upgrade to latest Ubuntu version. You can upgrade by multiple ways either from the command line or using GUI update tool.

We are going to upgrade using command line with do-release-update. do-release-upgrade is part of the “update-manager-core” package that is installed by default on most Ubuntu systems. You can install it with:

sudo apt install update-manager-core

When that finishes, run the Ubuntu upgrade utility.

sudo do-release-upgrade -d

Now it will prompt you a couple of questions about how you want to continue with the upgrade. It will ask you whether you want the services to be automatically restarted during the upgrade, Press y. It also may ask several questions so read the questions carefully before making a selection.

The upgrade process may take some time and depends on the number of updates and your Internet speed.

The update tool will prompt you whether you want to remove the obsolete software. If you are not sure about it just type d and check the list of obsolete packages. Generally it is safe to enter y and remove all obsolete packages.

You will be prompt for reboot your system. Type y to reboot:

System upgrade is complete.
Restart required
To finish the upgrade, a restart is required.
If you select 'y' the system will be restarted.
Continue [yN] y

Step 4 – Verification#

You can check the Ubuntu version by entering the below command:

lsb_release -a

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Release: 20.04
Codename: focal

For a desktop user, it will show a new graphical boot splash and login screen.

You did it. Enjoy your new Ubuntu 20.04 installation.

Conclusion#

Upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS was successful. Now you can test your apps and code that is compatible with the upcoming version.

If you face any error, visit the release notes page. Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions.