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I've been given a Dell XPS 13 9360 which boots up in insecure mode and starts up as 16.04. I've noticed the wifi doesn't work and it's a clean desktop, i.e. all the user files are gone. What has happened and how do I get back to 22.04?

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    Are you sure that Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is installed in that computer? Can you run commands from a text screen or terminal window?
    – sudodus
    Jun 6, 2022 at 20:01
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    I upgraded the system when 22.04 came out. The system has been upgraded with every new release since 2017. I can run commands from the terminal window.
    – droid001
    Jun 6, 2022 at 21:02
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    It is strange that it runs as 16.04. You will help us help you, if you tell us more about your system. So please download the Ubuntu Forum's system-info script, run it, let it upload the result to a pastebin and edit your original question to put a link to the pastebin.
    – sudodus
    Jun 6, 2022 at 21:08
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    If you have no wired internet, you have to transfer the file some other way. Then you might have to go via some other computer and upload manually to some pastebin, for example at paste.ubuntu.com
    – sudodus
    Jun 6, 2022 at 21:17
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    You can find the script output here.
    – droid001
    Jun 6, 2022 at 21:41

1 Answer 1

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Thanks for the system-info result :-)

  • Yes, it is really running 16.04 LTS, it is using the xenial repositories so there is no doubt about that.
  • Also I can see that the original installation date is 2022-06-05, and no release upgrade is performed.
  • The only Linux file system is used as root file system. So there is no place for a 22.04 version to exist alongside 16.04. If there were a 22.04 system, it has been overwritten with the current 16.04 system.

  • If the computer is new for you, it is really no problem, the computer is new enough for a current version of Ubuntu. Download Ubuntu Desktop 22.04 LTS and/or 20.04.4 LTS, create live systems in USB drives, compare them 'Try Ubuntu live', and install the version that you like best.

  • If you were running 22.04 LTS recently, and it suddenly went into this state, we must try to understand what happened. I guess you did not install 16.04 by mistake, but maybe you happened to restore it from a backup instead of creating a backup from your internal drive with 22.04. Or maybe the internal drive was replaced by another drive by mistake?

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    I don't have any information of how the computer got into that state but I can mention that its owner is of a bit older generation and not too computer literate. The device came with 18.04 preinstalled so it's strange why the system jumped back to a version two years later. I might be wrong on this point but I have a system recover USB stick with 18.04 on it. Maybe Dell has that installed in case some kind of panic state is reached? Just speculating keeping in mind the computer was launched in 2017 and the latest LTS was 2016.
    – droid001
    Jun 7, 2022 at 7:35
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    The only backup which was made was the some of the user's folder to NextCloud.
    – droid001
    Jun 7, 2022 at 7:43
  • We need not worry about why 16.04 LTS is installed now, but it has passed end of life, and will receive no security updates. For that reason it is important to make a fresh installation of a current version of Ubuntu. You can let the installer use the whole drive (and overwrite 16.04 LTS).
    – sudodus
    Jun 7, 2022 at 8:04
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    Good idea. I think I'll be also limiting the user rights of the owner so something similar won't happen in the future. Thanks for your time and effort.
    – droid001
    Jun 7, 2022 at 11:18

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