How to Upgrade Ubuntu 14.04 LTS to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Upgrade Ubuntu 14.04 LTS to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. Ubuntu is widely used Linux operating system used for Desktop as well as Server edition. Ubuntu providing two types of releases Standard release and Long Term Support (LTS) release. Ubuntu provides support for standard releases for approx 1 year while Long Term Support is useful for approx 5 years.

Ubuntu Desktop uses can upgrade to any release but for Server editions we recommend to use LTS release and always upgrade to LTS release only.

A new Ubuntu 16.04 LTS release is available to upgrade. Every Ubuntu (Desktop + Server) users can upgrade your systems to this new release. As you are currently using Ubuntu 14.04 LTS so we recommend you to upgrade to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

1. Backup Important Data

We strongly recommended to backup all your important data from your Server or Desktop to a remote location. Also take a complete system snapshot (if possible).

2. Upgrade to Ubuntu 16.04

As we have taken complete backup of server system. Let’s move to upgrade process. First use below commands to upgrade current system packages.

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade

Now install the update-manager-core package on your system.

$ sudo apt-get install update-manager-core

Now edit /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades file and make sure Prompt value is set to lts like below.

 Prompt=lts

Finally execute below command to upgrade your Ubuntu 14.04 LTS system to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS system.

$ sudo do-release-upgrade -d

Follow the on-screen instructions and your upgrade will complete. This process may take some time according to your network speed.

3. Verify Upgrade

To verify upgrade just check the current version of your Ubuntu system using following command. This will show details about your Ubuntu operating system.

$ lsb_release -a

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
Release:        16.04
Codename:       xenial