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About a year ago, Winter of 2020, I installed Kubuntu 19.10 and kept up with regular updates through the "Discovery" gui. But it never notified me about the need to upgrade to 20.04 and now I'm stuck with a broken apt in need of going through a particular process(which I would much prefer not having to do) for EOL upgrades.

Is this situation unique to odd-numbered releases (like 19.10, 17.04 etc)?

Can this situation also occur when on an LTS release? LTS releases take longer to reach EOL, but what happens then? Can this stuck/broken state still occur?

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    Most likely you did get an upgrade notice, but clicked it away (as many users do) by clicking the 'don't remind me again' option that means you don't get prompted again. Read the messages when they occur. Most stuck issue are the result of users adding 3rd party (non-Ubuntu, eg. PPA's) sources to their systems; especially one without careful maintenance.
    – guiverc
    Feb 17, 2021 at 14:01

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Yes. The repositories for older releases that are not supported get moved to an archive server. This happens quicker in non LTS versions.

https://ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle

To fix apt, you need to update your sources.list file to prepend old-releases as explained in

How to install software or upgrade from an old unsupported release?

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The situation can occur on ANY release of Ubuntu, since a stuck/broken apt is usually caused by the human's folly.

By far, the most common causes of a stuck/broken apt are third-party (non-Ubuntu) repositories, PPAs, wrong-version repositories, and/or manually downloaded packages.

The most common cause of stuck-by-a-missed release is that you clicked "do not remind me again" when the system DID prompt you that a newer release of Ubuntu is available. That also counts as human folly.

Avoid those, and you won't have a stuck apt.

If you are using a 32-bit (i386) version of Ubuntu 18.04, you won't get upgrade prompts for 20.04 or newer releases. Ubuntu has dropped the 32-bit Desktop stack since 18.04. However, you should simply get a notification from this case instead of a stuck/broken apt. 32-bit libs for steam and wine and other cases continue to be upgraded normally on 64-bit (amd64) systems.

  • If you can reproduce a stuck/broken apt on a stock install of Ubuntu using only packages in the correct version of the Ubuntu repositories (and without using --force), please file a bug report so we can fix it.

  • If you can reproduce system-never-prompted-me-to-upgrade on a stock install of the previous release (that is still supported), then please file a bug report. The Ubuntu developers definitely want to know, step-by-step, how you accomplished that.

  • Apt provides lots of troubleshooting output. Advice: Read it. Every time.

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  • this also happens if you try to upgrade 18.04 to newer and are only on a 32bit system (i386 arch) since 32bit arch is not supported anymore.
    – Thomas Ward ♦
    Feb 17, 2021 at 15:24
  • @ThomasWard good catch, thank you. Edited.
    – user535733
    Feb 17, 2021 at 15:31

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