Upgrade paths

[FSandefur]

As I see it, starting from my kubuntu 15.10 current installation, I have two basic choices.

1: grab the live install iso image, burn it to a DVD (or to a usb) and do a wipe and clean install from that. As an aside, I'm not sure why there isn't an 'upgrade' option in this method. If I've managed to miss it, it would not hurt my feeling to have it pointed out.

2: Online upgrade via the Update Manager (normally). Given that the Muon Update Manager has been having it's own issues, I've seen the command-line work around.

This is my question: the upgrade via Update Manager attempts to keep your current software and data as intact as it can, thereby reducing the workload of the upgrade. If you, for whatever reason, have to do the upgrade by the command-line, does it still attempt to preserve your data and such, or is it a wipe/clean install like the DVD method?

[Snowhog]

You can upgrade from 15.10 to 16.04; in fact, as it's a 'one version up' move, it's 'standard' to do so. If you never received a notification through the Package Manager Update Notifier, then you probably don't have things set up to do so (from the Package Manager). That's easily remedied, but you can perform the update from a console, which is according to many; myself included; the 'better' way to do so.

Open Konsole. Type: sudo do-release-upgrade and press Enter.

If you are running on a wireless network connection, you are strongly advised to switch to a wired connection before doing this. IF your wireless connection requires a driver, you may very well loose networking part way through the process; not a good thing.

[elijathegold]

Grab yourself the iso, prepare your install media, backup your data and run the upgrade. If it works, fantastic otherwise you'll have a USB key ready to go for a clean install. Even though I successfully upgrade a machine from 14.04 -> 14.10 -> 15.10 I still made sure my main machine was working so I could grab the iso on that if needed.

[claydoh]

As I see it, starting from my kubuntu 15.10 current installation, I have two basic choices.

1: grab the live install iso image, burn it to a DVD (or to a usb) and do a wipe and clean install from that. As an aside, I'm not sure why there isn't an 'upgrade' option in this method. If I've managed to miss it, it would not hurt my feeling to have it pointed out.

The iso image is exactly that, mainly an image that is copied to the drive. There are no packages there to perform an upgrade with as there used to be way back when

2: Online upgrade via the Update Manager (normally). Given that the Muon Update Manager has been having it's own issues, I've seen the command-line work around.

The upgrade tool does not use a graphical package manager, it it using apt and dpkg and other tools and scripts. There is a basic gui that shows what is going on, but it is doing everything underneath via the command line, so there is no real difference between clicking the button or running a command.

This is my question: the upgrade via Update Manager attempts to keep your current software and data as intact as it can, thereby reducing the workload of the upgrade. If you, for whatever reason, have to do the upgrade by the command-line, does it still attempt to preserve your data and such, or is it a wipe/clean install like the DVD method?

As mentioned above, the gui and cli upgrade processes are identical. Files and folders in your /home are not touched, so all your user level settings such as email and wallpapers and the like will not change. Most system level configs, say if you have edited ssh or samba settings, you will be prompted to choose to keep your existing config, or go with the default as provided by the new package. Nothing is actually wiped, just any new packages are upgraded, and old no-longer-needed ones are uninstalled.

Though I usually do fresh installs (but preserving my /home folder) somewhat often for testing, my HTPC has so far seen 7 upgrades using the prompt from the update manager only, no command line except twice? to fix something that went wrong during or after, and one was my fault and I new it was coming


Many people keep a separate /home partition so that doing a clean install is quick and easy, and depending on one's internet speed a lot faster than upgrading. The upgrade on the HTPC took over two hours this time, and the last time I did a clean install on my daily driver laptop I had installed and set up in less than 30 minutes.

[FSandefur]

Thank you all for your replies. I started my day out learning a couple of new things, and that's always a good way to start a day.
Since you all basically told me what I was hoping to hear, all's the better.

[FSandefur]

So I did the command line upgrade as Snowhog indicated, it went smoothly, and pretty much flawlessly. I've got two pretty minor issues, that I'm betting someone has a simple fix for.

First, the upgrade shut off my auto-login setting, and I can't get it to retain the setting to turn it back on. Yeah I know it's not a secure way to do things, but this computer is physically isolated, so .....

Second, for some unknown reason Gwenview starts up taking up less then a quarter of my screen, but thinks it's maximized. Again, minor thing, but sort of curious.

Neither of these are in anyway important, but I'd love to know how to fix them. For Gwenview I'm considering just using synaptic to remove it entirely, reboot, then reinstall it.

[acheron]

Autologin for sddm is set in /etc/sddm.conf

If the systemsettings module is not setting that, then you can manually set it by adding the correct session and user details

[Autologin]
Relogin=false
Session=
User=

Session=plasma.desktop for the session so I would have

[Autologin]
Relogin=false
Session=plasma.desktop
User=acheron