I am currently using version 24.04. Is it possible for me to downgrade to version 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish without having to clear the disk and reload all over?
No, not possible.
And why you want to do that anyway?
If youāre trying to solve an issue better ask about that, not about what you think is a solution.
Are you wanting to discuss this? as a feature youād like in the future or are you seeking support? Youāve posted this in the community discussion area.
Backups are how you achieve this in the best way; ie. restore your latest jammy or 22.04 backup.
You mention release(s), but not which product which can make a huge difference. I have non-destructively re-installed systems and gone backwards myself; but Iāve also experienced problems with this approach as well (problems with specific apps where the newer software made changes the older software couldnāt deal with) so rather than being a purely release question, you need to consider all apps & data that youāre installed if your data is important to you.
Iāll provide a link which mentions what Iāve used thatās more useful for desktop installs (over Server), but Iād treat it as an option (based on details you didnāt provide) rather than a solution.
ps: Iām going to move this to the support area; youāve posted this in area intended for ādiscussion and coordination of community-related activitiesā.
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Hi @lml98905
Are you having a particular issue that you are trying to resolve by downgrading? Functionality, experience, performance, or other?
Or is this just a general question about process?
I am not an Ubuntu guru, so how to do this is beyond me. But I have significant experience in Windows, Solaris, and a couple of other OSās and I can say that no OS I have ever used supports an āonlineā downgrade. They only support reinstall over a reformatted disk.
Thanks for your patience in reading this response that doesnāt answer your question.
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Thatās a great pointā¦ (and thank you !)
If for example your issue is kernel, or kernel module related (aka related to drivers), the HWE kernel stack of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS was backported from 24.04ās GA kernel, so the fix for that is just switching kernel stack on 24.04. On a release-upgrade the same packages are kept; thus if you were using the HWE kernel stack on 22.04 youāll be using that on 24.04, or the 6.8 kernel on 22.04 was upgraded to 6.14 (soon to switch to 6.17) where 6.8 is the GA kernel (6.8) is available via package change.
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I am still on 22.04 .. have been busy on other things. and there are other reasons for staying such as compatibility with a remote 22.04. But I invested in StarTech multi caddy unit years ago coupled with rEFInd I can switch between any OS versions. I even have a old 18.04 from past experiemnts just because it holds some archives. So explore rEFInd and create muliple OS .. They all work through single USB 3 connection. Not your internal drive. Look up StarTech dual caddy unit. I have also added a StarTech USB switcher so I can connect USB dual caddy to different devices (Linux, Windows, Mac). but only one at a time connected not sharing in parallel. Mix and match.
I have tried and failed miserably in any of the several attempts I have made to downgrade. It just doesnāt work, trust me you donāt have the time to go down that particular rabbit hole.
Like all good Linux users you have taken reliable backups of all your previous versions so you can easily revert back havenāt you?
I use QT-Fsarchiver and highly recommend it. There is a CLI version fsarchiver in the repos.
Incidentally if you are dual-booting with Windows, put your Windows installation on a different physical disc. That will save you a lot of angst down the track.
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I have foolishly allowed an automatic upgrade to take place, and each time regretted it. There is always something that it breaks, it can be some esoteric piece of software I use to monitor and chlorinate my pool automatically, or Mythtv, something that does not fit in the devās thinking when developing a new version. Before doing it I always do a backup of my system, it takes me a couple of hours each time to revert and get things back the way they were.
Nowadays I use an USB3 M2 caddy with which I experiment on any new versions and it can take weeks before I am confident enough to make it my daily driver.
Indeed, āesotericā third-party software sometimes causes issues when release upgrading.
Other than that my experience has been, fortunately, the opposite of yours. But I donāt have software outside of the traditional repositories, snaps and flatpaks.
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There is no ādowngradeā function similar to an āupgradeā function.
There is no āundoā function for an āupgradeā.
Before proceeding, be sure that you have an offline proper image of a FULL BACKUP or your ORIGINAL disk at the later version.
That backup should include a separate task to keep a SNAPSHOT of a subset of specified files that fully describe the customizations that were applied to your existing system.
You might also want to take note of all the packages that were installed post-OS, in order to recreate your Personal Productivity suite!
If there is minimal non-system data on the āprimaryā drive, the simpler approach is to
- capture a full system backup,
- perform the fresh install, and
- restore the non-system data.
The below is not simple, nor pretty, but it is time-consuming and workable, but requiring a very discipline approach. The below approach leaves the huge amounts of non-system data that is already existing on the āprimaryā drive in place (if that is all one single partition).
The only way to āretrogradeā to an earlier version is to
-
have an image of that earlier installed version for the specific computer as a backup snapshot (last version before the upgrade) preserved in parallel with the backups of the newer installed system disk ā¦
-
which is why it is good practice to keep User or Personal data on the root partition to a minimum (ensuring those are kept on other partitions, even if on the same physical drive).
So, if you can borrow a drive,
-
install that drive #2 in your chassis in parallel with you main system drive,
-
physically disconnect your old driveās SATA cable for security,
-
boot from Live ISO of the older version,
-
do the install on drive #2,
-
boot from the this older OS on drive #2 to confirm functional,
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shut down the computer and re-connect you main system driveās SATA cable,
-
again boot from the older OS on drive #2,
-
then ā¦ VERY CAREFULLY ā¦ using that older OS as your temporary primary system
-
purge the SPECIFIC directories representing the OS (on the original āmasterā disk) and
-
replacing those by the corresponding directories/files from drive #2,
-
then ensure the fstab correctly reflects the partitions on your āoriginalā hard disk,
-
attempt a boot from that original disk,
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if it fails reboot from the second disk perform any further tweaks,
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boot from GRUB installed on your NEW disk but select the detected OS resident on your old disk,
-
perform that boot,
-
if it works, be sure to perform, from this latest boot, a
grub-install ${device}(not partition) of your good (ORIGINAL) drive.
A reboot at this point should confirm that all is ārestoredā and functional under the earlier OS on you āmasterā drive.
Otherwise, repeat the boot from drive #2, perform further tweaks, and reboot again from the āmasterā drive.
Iāve had to do the above on 2 occasions before I woke up and preserved permanent images of earlier OS versions for every upgrade performed.
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Terabyte drives are now relatively cheap. I have a Sabrent M2 drive offline cloning dock which also doubles as an USB3 e3xternal M2 drive caddy. I have 3 identical 256gb M2 drives that I rotate. I also have a PCIe removable hot swappable internal caddy, this I use as my daily driver. I also have 2 onboard M2 drives for my data, one 3.4tb for my personal stuff, office, tax, email backups and family documents etc. and a 2tb internal M2 for my video/Mythtv/films and tv series library. The 3 256gb system drives I use one as the daily system, one as a direct clone of that system and one for experimentation with new/different linux flavours. This works well for me. I also have another external USB3 M2 caddy with a Windows installation - just in case I have a need for other esoteric software.
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I have an issue with 24.04 because it canāt deal with my 1024 x 1780 monitor. I thought Iād try downgrading.
24.04 has an issue dealing with my 1024 x 1780 monitor. So I thought Iād try downgrading.
The HWE kernel stack of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is the GA kernel stack of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.
What kernel are you using?? do you need to downgrade release? or just downgrade kernel stack?
Ubuntu LTS releases have kernel stack choice (GA, HWE & OEM); default stack set by your install media.
If you enter uname -r what do you see? A Ubuntu 24.04 LTS system using the GA kernel will return 6.8 (first two numbers are what interest me; not update detail), where the HWE kernel will respond 6.14. Re-installing Ubuntu 22.04 LTS if you use HWE media will have you using the 6.8 kernel anyway (it was backported to 22.04 from 24.04!).
Docs page giving some detail that maybe useful is Kernel/LTSEnablementStack - Ubuntu Wiki where the downgrade detail can be found by searching for āTo downgrade from HWE/OEM to GA kernelā (or just search word ādowngradeā
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All I know is that I want to go from 24.04 to 22.04.
As others said, this is impossible by design, the deb packaging system can only go forward based on version numbers of packages so a downgrade is simply impossible, youād need a re-install ā¦
How about you tell us a little more about this issue (along with providing some logs and error messages) and we try to help you solving this particular issue, going backwards in time is usually not a good way to solve a problem anyway 
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Thatās unfortunate. It means you learnt nothing from the discussion.
Please go back (up) and read the comments again so you can finally understand thereās no such thing as ādowngrade releaseā - the closer to that you can go is what was expressed in @ericmarceau ās comment -.
Also very important is that even with 22.04 it may not work for the purpose youāre expecting - support for the weird ratio monitor that, according to you report, was correct in 22.04 but isnāt in 24.04 - because all LTS releases have multiple choices for kernel as detailed by @guiverc in a comment just above your dismissive āall I knowā¦ā
Again, you should be asking about the issue itself, not about what you think is a solution. In this case what you think is a solution many here are quite confident it ISNāT, for obvious reasons. The only scenario where it would make some sense your reasoning is if we assume there was a regression in the kernel module (again, totally dependent on the kernel version, no so much, if at all, on the Ubuntu release numbering) in such the new version doesnāt work the same way it used to in the older version you were using prior to the release upgrade.
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As a sanity check, have you tried the Live ISO for 22.04, in order to confirm that it will in fact recognize your display the way you want it to?
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No, it was just suggested to me by another community forum member.
So hereās another suggestion to try a Live ISO in order to confirm that itāll in fact recognize your display the way you want it toā¦
Chances are youāre barking at the wrong tree.
The question you should be asking is āwhat do I have to do to in order to have the OS (Ubuntu/Kubuntu/etc.) [release] correctly recognize the native resolution of the monitor [brand/model] which is [columns]x[lines]? Here are my hardware specs: CPU, GPU, etc.ā
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