How is an LTS to LTS upgrade different than a Standard Release to Standard Release upgrade? Are fresh installs usually preferred to guarantee a stable environment?
2 Answers
Any upgrade is a risk. Things can break in between. Power failure can be an issue. So purely based logics going from LTS to LTS is less risky than going LTS->NON-LTS->NON-LTS->NON-LTS->LTS.
The whole idea of using an LTS is to not upgrade in between LTSs. You get a lot of stability in exchange for not getting the latest software out-of-the-box.
And yes; if possible I would always go for a reinstall. A reinstall has a side-effect: it will remove all packages you installed and that you never used.
Because short term supports contain many broken packages and removing or adding them may cause serious complication in package dependencies.
A user like me who likes to try things and always install packages from less reliable sources tend to get a lot lot of broken packages or even break good packages over time.
So it is always recommended to upgrade between LTSs