Ubuntu Version: 24.04 LTS
now the release of 26.04 LTS has been done i have just upgraded my two systems to 24.04 LTS from 22.04 LTS.
a 13” Dell latitude laptop refurbished by myself, i5 7200u, 16GB DDR4, 250GB 2.5 SSD and a HP 24” all in one desktop, Ryzen 7 5825u, 64GB DDR4, 1TB M2 NVMe SSD. both running Ubuntu with pro enabled.
i tend to keep one LTS behind. i wont upgrade to 26.04 LTS until 28.04 LTS has been released and by doing it this way i seem to have had very few problems. everything is just running smooth and error free.
so, are you cutting edge and upgrading as Ubuntu is released or do you wait and upgrade at a later date.
I personally have only one machine currently running Ubuntu. My older computer that ran Ubuntu died shortly after I put 26.04 on it. I will miss that computer dearly, as it got me through ten years of hard work and fun gaming. It had a hand in helping me finish high school and all of my bachelors and master’s degree things.
I like to upgrade my Ubuntus as soon as possible because of new kernels and other miscellaneous things.At one point, I had a script that would automatically update everything on my machines and occasionally check for the latest versions. I have since opted to do it manually since I get a lot of satisfaction out of doing a one-liner on the command line once every two weeks.
On my desktop I have Ubuntu 22.04 24.04 25.10 26.04 and Debian Forky/sid and I’m now writing from 26.10. I upgrade 1 partition immediately as soon as the repository of the future release is available.
I tend to “go by the book” and wait until the first point release to do a release upgrade on the LTS path, because I value stability; let others clear the minefield.
But I also get impatient, so last time I employed APT pinning to upgrade select packages to LTS-next already, before do-release-upgrade proper.
For my own use-cases and homelab cluster, I follow this strategy. Works quite well and is very straightforward.
However as a professional, it’s a completely different story.
For one, none of the shops I’ve worked at have allowed in-place upgrades, it’s always been an OS, hardware, and software stack migration. So while 26.04 is out for GA, we can’t upgrade immediately. We have to wait for IT to approve as well as - in my case - IBM to certify/verify db2 compatibility with 26.04. Not that I am complaining, it gives me plenty of time to assess, plan, and give my users a heads-up that a database upgrade/migration is on the roadmap.
Most of my desktop machines are on interim releases. They tend to run vanilla Ubuntu Desktop, so the first one undergoes a scheduled backup &upgrade & testing sometime soon after the prompt appears. After that one, the rest simply get upgraded when the prompt appears.
My servers tend to be on LTS releases, each gets a scheduled backup & upgrade & testing sometime soon after the first point release.
I upgrade to the latest LTS version of Ubuntu on release day (usually a Thursday). For the interim releases between LTS versions I use Oracle Virtual Box to check out what is “baking” for future Ubuntu versions. I really like the new “Resource Monitor” in 26.04 which is way more presentable than “System Monitor” in 24.04 LTS & earlier versions. Lots can change in 4-years let alone 2-years. The rule is to wait for the 1st point release to install but I have low will power to resist trying out the new Ubuntu operating system.
the reason for the delayed upgrade LTS to LTS is because i had major issues when first upgrading 22.04 to 24.04 LTS. if people remember the old forum when 24.04 LTS was first released it was blowing people out of the water when upgrading.
so, i reinstalled 22.04 LTS and decided to wait until 26.04 LTS was released and then upgrade to 24.04 LTS. thats my LTS, Long Term Strategy.
my upgrade to 26.04 will now wait until 28.04 is released , now that is Long term ..
I will be performing in-place upgrades on my boxes from 22.04 to 24.04 later this year. Learning that this particular update gave many users issues doesn’t really sit well with me. Can you shed light on this, even if it’s a little bit?
Normally I’d look on the old forums but they’re gone (o7 and godspeed).
Also, I would do quick online search but it’s quite late right now… and I kind of want to hear what kind of issues folks ran into during the 22.04 to 24.04 upgrade.
they had to recompile the kernel because of a major flaw with SSH and to be honest they rushed 24.04 out of they door to maintain a deadline. anybody who had encryption enabled the upgrade just destroyed the installed OS.
but this only came to light after many had tried upgrading, so after that i re-installed 22.04 and sat back and waited until 26.04 was released before upgrading to 24.04. the upgrade from 22.04 to 24.04 went without a hitch on 2 systems both of which are encrypted, and that is my plan from now on staying an LTS behind the current LTS release. i want a stable secure system not one i have to fight to get working ..
For my homelab, I clone my primary disks before major upgrades out of precaution. I’m fairly confident the 22.04 to 24.04 upgrade will work just fine, and if it doesn’t, I can simply revert.
Are you sure that’s what happened? Because I’m asking myself why that could even happen; the release upgrader doesn’t need to touch that, and it didn’t when I did the upgrade. I do know however that some people stumbled over issues like that in the installer which was a little misleading, so some folks seemed to think it would reuse the already existing encryption setup, when in fact it was setting it up from scratch.
well the upgrade blow 2 systems of mine out of the water while upgrading 22.04 to 24.04 both fails were due to the upgrade not be able to complete fully so both systems had the install destroyed.
this was well reported on the old forum at the time. hence why i now stay one LTS behind the released version.
I recently upgraded Ubuntu 16 to 18 and am very happy. U16 was on ESM, and I enabled that for U18, and it is basically the same system, especially since it was an upgrade, and it kept the Unity desktop. I’ll upgrade to U20 when ESM expires for U18 in 2028. I like the older ‘buntus. Call me a Luddite, doesn’t bother me a bit. I like what I like.
as stated i stay one LTS behind the current LTS release and have found i get very few problems. at the moment i have just upgraded to 24.04.4 from 22.04.5 and wont upgrade to 26.04 LTS until 28.04 LTS is released
having less problems is one of the major reasons i moved to Linux many years ago.
