How to upgrade Ubuntu from 18.04 LTS to 20.04 LTS

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) was officially released on April 23. This is the latest Ubuntu Long Team Support (LTS) release, with security patches and updates available until 2025. If you are currently using an older version of Ubuntu,  you may be interested in upgrading.

In this tutorial we will going to show you how to upgrade Ubuntu from 18.04 to 20.04. The first of all is update all Ubuntu packages and then go to test the OS updates.

I'll explain just one method about it, but I'll also explain how to test in graphical mode this trick, first of all after upgrade our Ubuntu system is check if we have any update pending like we can see in the following screen-shot:

After that we need to do one thing more to verify and be sure that don't have any update more on our system, so let's check right now.

Now we've verify that we don't have pending updates, go to do the trick to verify again and see if we are updating on LTS or in NORMAL mode the updates:

We'll use the next command to open the upgrades-releases file in Ubuntu, This step  may vary around which another OS you are using right now, 'cause I just tested these tricks on Ubuntu. So, I'll show you a list with the step to follow to update our system to 20.04 LTS (FOCAL FOSSA.). The list figure in the following list:

1. Step one: Verify if we have any other security or patched update on our system.
2. Step two: Make sure that our operating system does not really have any other update or at least if it seems so.
3. Change update mode from lts to normal.
4. Do the next command: sudo update-manager -d, and the update will start

Advanced options & third-party software

For most users, the flow described above will be sufficient. However, you can further customise it, which is particularly useful for those using third-party software that is installed from software channels outside the standard Ubuntu archives. For instance, if you’ve installed the Google Chrome, Skype or VirtualBox software manually, the updates for these applications are provided through separate repositories.

By default, non-Ubuntu software channels will be disabled during the upgrade. You will need to manually enable them after the upgrade is completely. Alternatively, you can instruct the upgrade tool to allow these additional packages.

This can be done by running do-release-upgrade with the –allow-third-party flag, as mentioned earlier.

Finally upgrade Ubuntu from the command line

The upgrade process on the command-line is very similar to what we have already done. The only difference is no GUI will be launched and you will be asked Y/N questions in the terminal window.

As we can see, the update process has started and we will only have to wait for the operating system to be updated, but of course first of all we must make sure that we have executed the command as root and that we had accepted that the operating system be updated.

Summary

If you are still undecided about the upgrade, and would like to learn more, you may want to sign up for a webinar highlighting the new features and technologies available in Ubuntu 20.04.

We hope you will find this tutorial valuable and useful, and we hope you enjoy your new desktop experience.