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How to install software or upgrade from old unsupported release?

Hi I'm trying to upgrade my old version 10 of Ubuntu to the latest version 12. when I open update manager I get dialogue box with "Your Ubuntu release is not supported anymore" and the Update Manager indicates it is "Building data structures" but never seems to progress any further and if I close the dialogue box which tells me it is no loger supported the update manager closes as well. I'm no geek how do I upgrade to a version 12.

Scott

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@Takkat: That question is about installing software in an old unsupported release, whereas this one is about upgrading an old unsupported release. They seem different to me. – Flimm Jan 10 at 13:14
@Flimm agreed. This may be better: askubuntu.com/questions/34430/can-i-skip-over-releases but we did close similar questions to the one I put in above (see linked section) in the past. – Takkat Jan 10 at 13:58

marked as duplicate by Takkat, fabricator4, Mik, Eric Carvalho, hhlp Jan 10 at 15:31

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3 Answers

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An easy way to do this would be to copy and paste your files on to a usb and then install 12.10 (or 12.04 if that's what you meant) like you normally would. Does the upgrade work when you run it from cli? Are there any errors?

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

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Thats because support for 10.10 has ended. If you want to get rid of that dialog box open software sources and set Release Upgrade to Never under the Updates tab.This stops the message from recurring.

Also you can check this link if you want to upgrade it to 12.04 (which is LTS)

Let me kno if any more help needed, good luck.

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The problem is that 10.10 is no longer supported. Upgrading to 12.04 (if you want a LTS) is the right way to go.

Option 1: Upgrading

Download the install DVD and upgrade using it. Just run the installer and choose not to format / (or any other partitions). Then once done run sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade. In the future upgrade before the end of the release to make sure the repos don't disappear on you. (There's multi-year overlaps on LTS releases).

This will result in a working 12.04 install but with your custom 10.10 programs and files still in place. Keep in mind that this might result in broken applications. Specially those complied outside apt. But if you want to keep everything then that's the way to go

Option 2: Re-install

Linux is pretty easy to re-install. Just backup/copy/preserve $HOME and all "your" settings/files will be preserved. If you share the computer then backup /home/. Install as normal and then put the /home/ files back. Clean upgrade keeping all your files. You will need to apt-get your apps again, but that's probably a good thing (after so long a lot of programs have changed).

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