Ubuntu 16.04 LTS reached End-Of-Life. This also means Ubuntu 16.04 on Windows also will get off from the Microsoft Store. For people who still use Ubuntu 16.04 on WSL, unless you have purchased ESM (Extended Security Maintainance) as part of Ubuntu Advantage, you will not be able to upgrade packages on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. If you still have a WSL instance running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, you can take the following actions.
Move Ubuntu 16.04 images to another Ubuntu UWP
As Ubuntu 16.04 is removed from the Microsoft Store, it is suggested to move your WSL system to another supported UWP version of Ubuntu:
Download one of them, open it once, and proceed to the following steps:
Export and Remove Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
Export your current distro to a tarball:
wsl --export Ubuntu-16.04 ubuntu1604.tar
It would be best if you also used this as a copy of your original Ubuntu 16.04 backup.
Install
For Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Execute the following commands:
wsl --unregister Ubuntu-20.04
wsl --import Ubuntu-20.04 C:\Users\<Your Windows Username>\AppData\Local\Packages\CanonicalGroupLimited.Ubuntu20.04onWindows_79rhkp1fndgsc\LocalState .\ubuntu1604.tar
ubuntu2004.exe config --default-user <Your WSL Username>
For Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
Execute the following commands:
wsl --unregister Ubuntu-18.04
wsl --import Ubuntu-18.04 C:\Users\<Your Windows Username>\AppData\Local\Packages\CanonicalGroupLimited.Ubuntu18.04onWindows_79rhkp1fndgsc\LocalState .\ubuntu1604.tar
ubuntu1804.exe config --default-user <Your WSL Username>
For Ubuntu
Execute the following commands:
wsl --unregister Ubuntu
wsl --import Ubuntu C:\Users\<Your Windows Username>\AppData\Local\Packages\CanonicalGroupLimited.UbuntuonWindows_79rhkp1fndgsc\LocalState .\ubuntu1604.tar
ubuntu.exe config --default-user <Your WSL Username>
And then you are done! After the installation, you are now safe to remove Ubuntu 16.04 from your Windows Machine. Now we should upgrade your system to a supported one:
Upgrading Ubuntu 16.04 to the latest supported version
You should still be able to upgrade to the latest supported version when this article is written. But if you miss the deadline, you should follow the following method to perform the release upgrade.
Update sources.list
To begin the upgrade, make sure you have a sources.list like the following:
# Required
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-security main restricted universe multiverse
# Optional
#deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ CODENAME-backports main restricted universe multiverse
You can use -backports and or -proposed if you want.
Dependencies
It would help if you also made sure the meta-package ubuntu-wsl is installed so the upgrade can continue without problems.
Run the upgrade
After you’ve done the above, run the updates and then the upgrade as usually:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo do-release-upgrade