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I've accidentally installed Ubuntu from a 16.10 iso image instead of 16.04 and I do not want to reinstall it via a format...

Is there a way I can downgrade from 16.10 to 16.04?

PS:

I desire to have an LTS release as to guarantee a certain stability level, would downgrading to 16.04 be a waste of time since 16.10 would allow me such stability, or switching to 16.04 is the logical thing to do?

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  • "such stability" - only the LTS will provide stability. 16.10 will expect you to upgrade to 17.04 when available.
    – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen
    Oct 21, 2016 at 10:55
  • You are probably right.
    – Hamza Ouaghad
    Nov 1, 2016 at 16:52

2 Answers 2

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There is no way to downgrade. You can install 16.04 from scratch.

16.10 has not been released yet, and you can't expect stability from a development version.

Please also take in accont that questions about Ubuntu 16.10 are off-topic at this site till the end of October, when it is planned to be released.

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  • Thank you for your quick answer. How do I go about this question as it is off-topic? should a deletion take place?
    – Hamza Ouaghad
    Jul 17, 2016 at 15:04
  • My opinion is that this question is on topic, because it is about installation of 16.04. But other questions regarding unreleased versions are off topic.
    – Pilot6
    Jul 17, 2016 at 15:30
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APT has a feature called pinning. If sources.list (or files in /etc/apt/sources.list.d) include repository entries for both xenial and yakkety, and file /etc/apt/preferences contains the following lines

Package: *
Pin: release a=yakkety,o=Ubuntu
Pin-Priority: -1

Package: *
Pin: release a=xenial,o=Ubuntu
Pin-Priority: 1001

apt-get dist-upgrade should try to install package versions corresponding to xenial release (i.e. downgrade all packages). If the process is interrupted, dpkg --configure --pending may help a little bit.

This is something that is not supported, and should not be done without backups and means for reinstall available. If something does work as it should after this kind of downgrade, the general advise will probably be "do a clean reinstall".

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  • I will take the right measures before trying this bad boy. Thanks for the tweak!
    – Hamza Ouaghad
    Jul 20, 2016 at 16:22
  • well you can just download older kernel ..and use 16.10 for purpose for what still 16.10 is not supported,like amd-gpu-pro with vulkan,etc...yeah there are so many answers to your question,because GNU/Linux means freedom of many choices, and yes depends why you want to do it!
    – siniša
    Mar 22, 2017 at 13:05
  • For me there is no file etc/apt/preferences instead, I have a dir etc/apt/preferences.d and it's empty with 0 items even hidden. Instead of a downgrade, I'm trying to move my 16.10 from my main machine to another machine 16.04. If that goes well, I will repeat on my main machine. So far 5 attempts all got broken. Either unity won't start on boot, or login into a blank screen.
    – M J
    Jul 21, 2017 at 0:27

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