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I am starting to reuse an old computer (windows xp era) which I converted to Ubuntu 10.04 several years ago. I want to upgrade my way to 14 - understanding that I have to upgrade one version at a time, but have run into a problem. Following the directions given on the "About Ubuntu" page, I set the system to Normal in Software Sources, the went to the Upgrade Manager to click Check for system upgrades. I then got a message telling me my version is no longer supported, and that I need to upgrade. I can't close this message normally, but have to force quit. What is my next best course of action? Thank you for your help.

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    Reinstall the system with 14.04 or 15.04
    – A.B.
    Oct 5, 2015 at 13:28
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    "I want to upgrade my way to 14" no you do not. You want to re-install 14.04 or 15.04 ;)
    – Rinzwind
    Oct 5, 2015 at 13:30

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10.04 is an LTS release. You should be able to upgrade directly to 12.04 (the next LTS) and from there, up to 14.04 (the next LTS after 12.04). That's not as hairy as the 8 release-upgrades you were worrying about.

However, a lot changed in the four years between releases. The Ubuntu Unity desktop probably won't work on ancient hardware (it might!). I would start by downloading a load of 14.04 ISOs for the lighter flavours (Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu-Mate, more here). Make a Live USB from them and try them out and see what works.

From there you can either do a straight reinstall (which might be most beneficial) during an upgrade, install their whatever-desktop metapackage. Given you'd already have the ISO, a straight reinstall would likely be faster.

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Because you say the following:

I am starting to reuse an old computer (windows xp era) which I converted to Ubuntu 10.04 several years ago.

Do yourself a favor and install a new system. If you have important data on this laptop, then back-up this data first!

During installation you will be asked for the type of installation. Select Something else and make sure you do not format your home partition!

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I concur with the other answers that:

1) You should seriously consider backing up any important data and reinstalling, rather than spending several days upgrading individual versions, which is error-prone, may break things, is not officially supported, and will take longer than reinstalling in your specific case.

2) 10.04 LTS, as an LTS release, can be upgraded directly to 12.04 LTS, then directly to 14.04 LTS. You can then either stop there and wait for 16.04 LTS (available in 6 months at the time of this writing), or go to 14.10 and then to 15.04, and sometime in the next few weeks 15.10. (2 or 4 updates, rather than 9 or 11)

Now that those disclaimers are made, here's the answer to your actual question:

To update a non-supported version of Ubuntu, you need to change the URLs in your apt sources.list to reflect that obsolete versions of Ubuntu are moved on Canonical's servers (this is done to prevent users from complaining/providing bug reports about unsupported versions or shooting themselves in the foot with a broken upgrade, which is possible, since, as I said, unsupported).

First, back up your apt sources:

sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.bak

Then edit /etc/apt/sources.list with your favorite text editor (using sudo, as you must be root to edit the file), and change all URL's that include http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ (or whatever specific country server you're on) to http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ Then the dist upgrade should work. But remember, it's unsupported and may fail or break your system, so back up everything first, if you insist on doing this.

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