upgrade from 22.04 LTS

[Anna Smith]

Hi, I'm quite new to kubuntu and I'm doing fine with version 22.04 LTS. I am thinking, with a lot of fear, to upgrade to 24.04 LTS, but I don't want to lose what I have installed and works for me. I don't want to lose Muon either...
Could someone explain me step by step how to upgrade? If possible by konsole.
Thanks.

[oshunluvr]

I understand your reticence. It's a bit scary to face what might be a massive change when you're just become accustom to how things work and all set up the way you want. First off, you don't have to upgrade. You just lose updates, support, and bug fixes from now on. If you do upgrade, you going to have to expect and accept changes. That's just how this works.

Muon, like any other freely developed piece of software, is subject to the wishes of the maintainer/developer in charge of the project. End users have no, or very little, say in how that goes. That's true when using any operation system, free or not.

You didn't give system details, but if you have space or more than one storage device, you could install Kubuntu 24.04 along side 22.04 and dual-boot. It you are using the BTRFS file system, it's extremely easy to just take a snapshot of your current system as it is, then upgrade, and restore back to the old version anytime you want. Another way to assuage your fears would be to boot to a LiveUSB session and actually use it for a period of time - days or weeks even. This would give you a taste of what you're heading for without forcing immediate change with no way to go back. Any of these are a way to let you gradually move toward the new version without taking a blind leap-of-faith.

Finally, as a Kubuntu user since 9.09, I can say with very few specific exceptions, every upgrade has been rather painless, and over the last several years the upgrade path has become even more reliable.

As far as the process itself goes, if you want to use the terminal it goes like this:

sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade
sudo apt autoremove
sudo do-release-upgrade

I cannot stress enough the importance of having a verified backup before beginning the upgrade. You should be doing that anyway, but it's even more important to do it prior to a system change as large as a version upgrade.

[Anna Smith]

Muon, like any other freely developed piece of software, is subject to the wishes of the maintainer/developer in charge of the project. End users have no, or very little, say in how that goes. That's true when using any operation system, free or not.

My question: if i have muon now in version 22.04 lts, will i lose it if i upgrade to 24.04 lts?

You didn't give system details

Kubuntu 22.04 LTS . I used to use Ubuntu and then Mate before "falling in love" with Kubuntu.

I already tried 22.04 when it came out, but formatted it (I had 22.04 with multiple errors from tinkering and touching things and I wanted a clean install). I was shocked that Muon was missing and I didn't see big improvements with the little I had experienced from 22.04, so I reformatted and reinstalled 22.04.

As you say, I have updated back up (even screenshots of the toolbars and configurations as I like), so there is no danger and I can afford to play and touch things (I learn by trial and error). That's why I want to upgrade, not an installation from 0.

Thank you very much for the information.

[oshunluvr]

muon does not appear in the 24,04 package lists:

https://apps.kde.org/muon/

so the direct answer is no, you will not have muon. Discover is the default (and it's a LOT better than it was in 22.04) or you can install others like Synaptic.

[Anna Smith]

Thanks, I used Synaptic with Ubuntu, no problem.

[Anna Smith]

Failed installation
Primer I tried to upgrade from 22.04 but at the point of maintaining or overwriting the Samba configuration it hung. I rebooted and continued the installation. On finishing and rebooting, it lost the Nvidia driver (my computer is over 10 years old, it's a GForce 740) and 24.04 doesn't seem to support an older card like this.
In case the failure was in the error with Samba, I reinstalled 24.04 by formatting but the problem with Nvidia was still there. So I went back to 22.04 which I think is more compatible with my hardware.
When I get over the scare I might try 24.04 on the laptop, which is more modern.
Thanks for the guidance.
(edit) I forgot, wine stopped working too, I don't know why?

[oshunluvr]

Supporting nVidia products and drivers are not the responsibility of the Kubuntu or Ubuntu developers and frankly, nVidia cards have always been a pain to upgrade. Looks like you would need driver version 304.1370 for that card - but you should verify that yourself - which is not tin the standard repos.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/drivers/

You might have to use the nvidia binary blob which requires a manual kernel re-build with every kernel upgrade. You might have better luck trying the open-source nouveau driver instead.

Seems possible that SAMBA hung because it attempted to connect and something has changed in the configuration preventing connection. Wine also, is finicky and probably needs re-configuring.

[Anna Smith]

Thanks, but by the moment I'm using 22.04... I'll do a new upgrade soon, I hope.