Upgrading from 16 LTS to 18 LTS

[Quispe]

I have been using 16 LTS for a couple of years and really like it. As 18 LTS is due in July I was wondering about having my laptop with a dual boot - Kubuntu 16 LTS and Kubuntu 18 LTS. The idea is that whilst I install 18 LTS and the printers, scanners and other software I still have a fully working 16 LTS. Once I am confident with 18 LTS then remove 16 LTS. Question is, is this a good idea to have two versions of Kubuntu for a dual boot on the same laptop? If it is, can someone guide me how to do the dual boot ? Thank you in advance and sorry if this is the wrong forum - I wasn't sure if this should be in the 18 LTS or 16 LTS forum.

[kc1di]

It will work as long as you keep them on completely separate partitions. Though if the live .iso works well with your hardware I wouldn't think it to be needed.
18.04 was released in April and it works great on my machines here.
Good luck what ever you choose.

[oldgeek]

I think you will be happy with 18.04. But try it out if you like with a dual partition--I use Oracle Virtual Machine to try other distros out, but if you have the HD space then why not dual boot. I did a clean install of Kubuntu 18.04 (well, not entirely clean--I used Aptik to restore much of the setup I had with 16.04) and so far it has been running without a hitch. What else can you ask for?

[oshunluvr]

I have been using 16 LTS for a couple of years and really like it. As 18 LTS is due in July I was wondering about having my laptop with a dual boot - Kubuntu 16 LTS and Kubuntu 18 LTS. The idea is that whilst I install 18 LTS and the printers, scanners and other software I still have a fully working 16 LTS. Once I am confident with 18 LTS then remove 16 LTS. Question is, is this a good idea to have two versions of Kubuntu for a dual boot on the same laptop? If it is, can someone guide me how to do the dual boot ? Thank you in advance and sorry if this is the wrong forum - I wasn't sure if this should be in the 18 LTS or 16 LTS forum.

This is an excellent idea as I have done it for more than a decade

By doing this, not only do you have time to transition to 18.04 at your own pace, you also have a backup and still bootable 16.04 in case something goes wrong with your 18.04 install.

The most basic way to do this is to simply partition your drive a make room for the new install and install to the new partition. Both installs will use your current swap. If you have a separate home partition, you'll need to prepare for that also. When you do the new install, GRUB should automatically detect the old 16.04 install and add it to the grub menu. Your new install will be the default, but you will be able to select 16.04 from the menu. Once installed, it is very simple to change the grub default to boot to your old install if you prefer.

Once you are using 18.04 full time, unless you need the hard drive space, there's really no reason to delete 16.04. My method was to leave 16.04 there until 20.04 appears, then wipe the 16.04 partition and install 20.04 in it's place. That way you always have two bootable installations.

An advanced technique: If you were interested becoming a bit more advanced with your Linux install, I suggest using BTRFS as your file system for your new installation rather than the ancient EXT4 format. The immediate benefit will be that you will not need a separate partition for home because BTRFS uses "subvolumes" in place of partitions. Another immediate benefit is you will gain the ability to take "snapshots" of your install and home subvolumes as a safety measure for you data. Additionally, these snapshots can be copied to another drive or device as a full backup with ease and without any other outside backup software. There are many more advanced features of BTRFS but I'll leave this here for now.

[Quispe]

I think you will be happy with 18.04. But try it out if you like with a dual partition--I use Oracle Virtual Machine to try other distros out, but if you have the HD space then why not dual boot. I did a clean install of Kubuntu 18.04 (well, not entirely clean--I used Aptik to restore much of the setup I had with 16.04) and so far it has been running without a hitch. What else can you ask for?

Hi Oldgeek,
Thank you for your encouragement. I was looking at Aptik that you mentioned. It seems like a great programme. Pity though, because no matter what I try I just can't get it to work. It won't create an icon to click on and trigger the programme. I tried downloading from the software writers, synaptic package manager and ubuntu software center and always the same. I tried searching to see if there is a problem with 16.4 LTS and I have seen others have this but there doesn't seem to be a way round the issue I have. Anyone else have this problem?

[Quispe]

This is an excellent idea as I have done it for more than a decade

By doing this, not only do you have time to transition to 18.04 at your own pace, you also have a backup and still bootable 16.04 in case something goes wrong with your 18.04 install.

The most basic way to do this is to simply partition your drive a make room for the new install and install to the new partition. Both installs will use your current swap. If you have a separate home partition, you'll need to prepare for that also. When you do the new install, GRUB should automatically detect the old 16.04 install and add it to the grub menu. Your new install will be the default, but you will be able to select 16.04 from the menu. Once installed, it is very simple to change the grub default to boot to your old install if you prefer.

Once you are using 18.04 full time, unless you need the hard drive space, there's really no reason to delete 16.04. My method was to leave 16.04 there until 20.04 appears, then wipe the 16.04 partition and install 20.04 in it's place. That way you always have two bootable installations.

An advanced technique: If you were interested becoming a bit more advanced with your Linux install, I suggest using BTRFS as your file system for your new installation rather than the ancient EXT4 format. The immediate benefit will be that you will not need a separate partition for home because BTRFS uses "subvolumes" in place of partitions. Another immediate benefit is you will gain the ability to take "snapshots" of your install and home subvolumes as a safety measure for you data. Additionally, these snapshots can be copied to another drive or device as a full backup with ease and without any other outside backup software. There are many more advanced features of BTRFS but I'll leave this here for now.

Hi Oshunluvr,
Thank you very much for replying and also for letting me know that what Im thinking of isn't madness. I'll have t read up on BTRFS as it sounds the way to go.

[GreyGeek]

Hi Oshunluvr,
Thank you very much for replying and also for letting me know that what Im thinking of isn't madness. I'll have t read up on BTRFS as it sounds the way to go.

It certainly IS!
After it saves your installation just once you'll never run another Linux distro without using it as your root filesystem. Just consider: a minute to make two snapshots (one of @ and one of @home) and 3 minutes to restore to a previous snapshot set if your current installation gets messed up. Compare that with spending hours trying to figure out what went wrong, or more hours trying to reverse a disaster by the usually means. And all of this backing up AND restoring can be done while you are still on and using your system!