Should I upgrade Ubuntu to 22.04 LTS?

I'm not a Ubuntu user anymore, but I still want to give my opinion: I hate staying behind on updates. I'd rather have it break a few days after release than postpone the trouble and wait until EOL. But that's just me. From my experience, the Ubuntu update process goes smoothly.

Take a glance at the changes[1] and see what you want to do. Either way, I'd recommend not postponing until EOL. I'd just recommend to wait a few weeks in order for the developers to iron out some of the bugs that usually come out on the first few days, and you're good to go.

[1]: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2022/01/ubuntu-22-04-release-fea...

Just do it, OS upgrades are pretty stable these days, and you’re unlikely to be missing any features. Though probably I’d upgrade to 20.04 now (or two-ish years ago), and then wait a while until 22.04 gets more stable. (And of course, make backups first, and do it on a Saturday/a day on which a broken computer will not cause too much hassle.)

I haven't paid attention to 22.04, so I don't know what major features or breaking changes it has. But I'll give my opinion on in general LTS releases.

* If you don't care about the new features, and just want to stay relatively up to date, wait for the 22.04.1 release. Generally despite their best efforts Ubuntu breaks one thing or another in their initial LTS release, sometimes pretty badly. They're often trying to shoehorn in some new technology that they shove in and it doesn't quite work right. I wait til the .1 release when they've fixed those problems.

* You can upgrade directly from LTS to LTS as of the .1, and if you were on 20.04 I would suggest doing just that. But you can only upgrade to the next LTS. So you'd have to upgrade from 18.04 to 20.04, then from 20.04 to 22.04. In which case I would say just do a new install when 22.04.1 comes out.

I upgrade every two years, usually in summer after bugs get fixed or at least assessed. I don't stay on older releases because it gets progressively harder to install new versions of software. Example from a few days ago, OSM for emacs requires an emacs version newer than the one in 20.04. There are ways to install it but it takes time.

And 18.04 will be EOL next year, right?

my 1804 machines are doing great work everyday, while 2004 is quickly turned off as soon as possible.. why?

* snapd taking over.. what is all this junk ?!

* too many processes.. too many IMPORTANT msgs to upgrade anything.. high idle on heavy equipment where 1804 purrs along

* wayland graphics.. previous VMs in vbox worked great, now its back to the 1980s with cursor lag and constant slow response

honestly, this 2004 compared to 1804 is the first time in ten years I have delayed and rolled back an Ubuntu LTS install; daily driver here. 2204? prove yourself

After Ubuntu 18 I will be switching to Debian. You should try a VM to see if you can stomach snaps.

I see you're using a Nvidia GPU. Are you also running the NVIDIA driver? If so I'd be cautious. I've had multiple installs break when installing or updating the Nvidia driver. Otherwise, if you're using the open source driver then I'd say go for it.

> on the theory that I will someday do neural network projects

Haha, so I'm not the only one making that excuse for myself for years.

Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish) won't be released until 2022-04-21, so it's not officially supported right now. That means it's considered off-topic for sites like AskUbuntu.com, for example, so if you want assistance with any problems you encounter you're probably better off waiting a few months.

As for what's different: you can read the current draft of the release notes for 22.04 [1] as well as the release notes[2] and official blog post[3] for 20.04. One big change from 18.04 is Wayland by default, another is optional ZFS support.

Also keep an eye out for removed packages you might care about so you can plan workarounds or replacements. For example, the music players Amarok and Banshee are no longer available after 18.04, nor is anything that didn't make the Python 2 to Python 3 transition. There are also new packages, or newly re-introduced packages like OpenSCAD and pdftk (although these are also available on 18.04 as a snap).

When you do upgrade, consider installing onto a new blank disk and then transferring your files from the old disk afterwards. I have used this approach exclusively after experiencing one-too-many bugs that originated from old system-level configuration files. It also means I have a fall-back drive if something goes wrong during installation.

[1] https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/jammy-jellyfish-release-notes...

[2] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FocalFossa/ReleaseNotes

[3] https://ubuntu.com/blog/whats-new-in-ubuntu-desktop-20-04-lt...

I highly recommend just taking the updates and installing them. LTS releases for desktop usage are just ways to sign yourself up to not have bugfixes for Gnome for 2+ years.

At least in my experience, each Ubuntu release has less crashes and just has improved usability over the past N years (N being large, but less than "Gnome 2 -> Gnome 3/Unity").

Ubuntu 20.04 is the first version where BT worked decently for my machines. I don't know if bluez fixes have been backported to 18.04 (but I don't think so), so if you use BT, the upgrade (to 20.04+) may make your devices work better.

For people with modern AMD machines (which is not your case), 20.04 should be a significant difference, since kernel versions around 5.10 added support for recent AMD CPUs.

The two above are the only things I remember making a difference on my system.

Software wise, it depends on the user practices. There are a variety of ways to obtain up to date packaged software (docker images, application images, PPAs etc - often from the official maintainers), so one can stay on a relatively old Ubuntu version, and still have up to date software without manually compiling anything. The exception is the kernel.

Personal thoughts: although not a ton of stuff I care about in this update, I've been through many Ubuntu update cycles and everything has worked fine for me. If anything, there are usually some improvements I've been waiting for.

I'd give it a go, just because it shouldn't cause any trouble and having some up to date software might not hurt.

i upgraded tp 20.0.4LTS from 18.04LTS last weekend because its four years and i know what to expect in it(snapization) and i am ok with it. I have heard about wayland everywhere in 22LTS which looks like a big change so i will wait for another 2 years to get all the reviews and upgrade when 24LTS is ready.

Wayland of course! I guess the necessity depends on whether you want non-integer scaling factors.

I have used Ubuntu on desktop and laptop for years.

My main advice is consider when to upgrade. I never upgrade to the latest release on release day. Usually I try to wait two months. Safer would be three months. By then most of the major bugs found on release should be fixed. I was burned more than once by not doing this.

On the other hand, when I had more free time, I tested pre-release Ubuntu releases in the KVM, or even installed them as boot alternatives in GRUB, reporting any errors I could find.

If you're concerned about breakage, wait at least two months after release before upgrading. Maybe even three.

As others have said, i'd personnally wait to the 22.04.01 update to migrate. Will do on some of my devices. My usecase is somewhat similar to yours.

Bugs that got throught are generally fixed. Keeping up with the LTS release conservatively is the best (and/or boring) way to avoid issues. There's nothing particularly groundbreaking about 22.04 and it's perfect that way.

I'm the user that like Gnome and I've mostly seen fewer annoyances and better memory management (Gnome is still not the lightest).

I don't have any NVIDIA parts, so I can't speak about that.

I cant live with the snap. So it is Debian and Mint now.

My 2c: I tend to wait until the first point release (e.g. 22.04.1) before I upgrade, especially where servers are concerned. It's less of an issue with desktops (assuming proper backups), but it's served me well to date.

Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases for relative release dates for each point release.

I've one (and only one) persistent upgrade issue in using Ubuntu over the last ~15 years - and that's ensuring that the updated/replaced Apache modules are enabled as they should be (especially PHP - it seems to be the biggest offender here)

Otherwise ... do this (as `root`):

--------------

# screen

(inside screen)

# do-release-upgrade

--------------

Participate where it wants, but otherwise sit back and enjoy the ride

I'd upgrade personally since the further behind you get, the more painful it becomes to upgrade down the road.

If you want to run neural nets you'll need to use the proprietary nvidia drivers and their matching cuda versions. I'd check which versions of the best ppas (graphics-drivers) are available for the newer distro.

Yes, after the systemd change, not a lot has changed really - since about 16.04 I think.

I roll every LTS upgrade maybe 3 months after the release - has always went pretty smoothly.

Does anyone know of an easy way to create a snapshot of the hard drive on linux? if anything go wrong you can back back and restore it back.

I was on 18.04, but really didn't get on with Snap. So I switched to PopOS, that's basically Ubuntu with FlatPak.

I generally wait for the xx.04.01 LTS release.

Do it.This isn't Windows or OSX where half your stuff will break or device brick.

In 10 years I've never had a dist upgrade issue.

they take time, if you touch anything things will brake. is Linux, Linux allow you to to break your system truth the process,and everything tend to be OK, multiples machines and all problems happens because of me, NEVER THE SYSTEMS. BACKUP for peas of mind

Their switch to Wayland broke some games running on Wine, had to downgrade to 20.04

https://ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle

Consider the release cycle, and the support length. Maybe don't bother moving unless you actually need something new that depends on an upgrade?

Maybe wait one month or two after the release before upgrading.

Running 22.04. It’s great, better and more stable than 21.10.