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I can't upgrade to 17.10 as it's not supported, I can't update to 17.04 and I can't install packages. I added old-releases etc. It's not worked for all apps. Why does Canonical not provide tool/instructions?

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    @Arronical - since 16.10 would update to 17.04, which is EOL also, I don't think that link will help him.
    – ravery
    Jan 24, 2018 at 11:30
  • It tried to change repo to old-release ... according to instructions askubuntu.com/questions/91815/…. It didn't solve my issue. I can't install apps. And I can't upgrade to 17.04 as well !
    – Vitaliy_P
    Jan 24, 2018 at 11:33
  • Re: your question about providing tools/instructions. They are given; 16.10 had a life of 9 months, and you get prompted to upgrade it before it EOLs so you ignored those prompts, plus wiki & online docs tell you this. You further had nine months to complete that upgrade before the next version was EOL and upgrade path was gone. If you couldn't upgrade within the 12 months, you had the LTS route with its longer LTS five year life [cycle]. The instructions were there, you just ignored them till it was too late, and clean install is now maybe best Backup your data first though.
    – guiverc
    Jan 24, 2018 at 11:51
  • "Why does Canonical not provide tool/instructions?" Yes they do: re-install.
    – Rinzwind
    Jan 24, 2018 at 13:40
  • @ravery after upgrading to 17.04 the OP could follow the procedure again to upgrade to 17.10. I've successfully upgraded from 9.04 to 14.04 in such a manner previously.
    – Arronical
    Jan 24, 2018 at 14:57

1 Answer 1

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Ubuntu only supports upgrading from LTS (long term support) to LTS, or from one intermediate version to the next. If you are going to use intermediate versions, you have to update every 6 months to avoid being caught in this situation.

Make a backup of important data before attempting updates in case something goes wrong. You have three options:

Fresh Install

Do a fresh install of 16.04 (LTS) or 17.10. In the options menu elect "Something else", specify the partition to use, and make sure the "Do Not Format" is marked. If you don't format the drive then your personal files should be safe.

Wait for 18.04

18.04 is the next LTS, It will be released in April. Perhaps you will be allowed to upgrade to it.

Manually upgrade

Manually upgrading is not officially supported and requires knowledge of package management.

  1. Edit /etc/apt/sources.list and change "yackkety' to "artful". And save.
  2. Do the following commands:

    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get upgrade
    sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
    sudo apt-get autoremove
    
  3. Now you will likely have some obsolete package left behind as dist-upgrade does as few removals as possible. So we need to clean up. I find aptitude is an excellent tool for this. Open aptitude and navigate to the "Obsolete Packages" heading. these packages were replaced by another package but were not removed because they break other packages. In most cases the package they break was also obsoleted; however, carefully review what aptitude will do when removing each package.

Note: 17.10 uses Wayland by default instead of Xorg, so this third step may be lengthy in your case. This change may also cause this method to fail horribly.

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  • Thank you for explanations. I do understand that I used not LTS version. But I haven't expected such issues with upgrading. I have updated other 17.04 to 17.10 successfully. But faced with issues for 16.10. And I know situation when 'hacking' repo to artful 'destroyed' 16.10. I did replacement to Xenial Xerus. It works for some of packages, but at least did't 'destroy' system.
    – Vitaliy_P
    Jan 24, 2018 at 12:06
  • Downgrading to Xenial is more problematic as apt wants to keep the newer versions of packages. It can be done but requires more knowledge of package management and version pinning. Fresh install is easier.
    – ravery
    Jan 24, 2018 at 12:17
  • I would definitely do a backup before a fresh install or manual upgrade.
    – Melebius
    Jan 24, 2018 at 12:31

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