What's going on? I am told that if I want to upgrade (from 14.04 LTS) I should have that "Let me know of new LTS versions" checkbox checked (which I do) in my software updates settings. However, if I want to upgrade I must download 16.04. Or, I can wait 3 months until 16.04.1 comes out and then it will just upgrade through software updater. If it's an upgrade, why need I download?
2 Answers
New LTS releases are only offered at the first “point release”: 14.04.1, 16.04.1, (probably) 18.04.1, etc. This is done because by then most of the bugs that only show up after a release goes public will be fixed, and people who prefer LTS releases usually prefer a stable system that works without giving them too much trouble.
You can (temporarily) select the option to inform you about all new releases instead of only new LTS releases if you want to be offered an update now. But remember that there might be some issues that affect you still...
To have a check you can simply do from terminal
do-release-upgrade -c
this will check if the actual release is open. If yes run the command
sudo do-release-upgrade
without any parameter.