Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) released and its time to upgrade

By | May 8, 2014

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

Ubuntu 14.04, codenamed Trusty Tahr has been just released a few hours ago and its time to upgrade to get the latest Ubuntu. Its the first release of this year and is an long term release that shall get support till April 2019. To learn about what's new in 14.04 check out the release notes.

Ubuntu 13.10 and 12.04 LTS users should be able to safely upgrade to 14.04 LTS throught the the update-manager. For other versions, the recommended way is to re-install Ubuntu.

Upgrade Ubuntu on desktop

ubuntu 14.04 trusty tahr

The steps to upgrade Ubuntu on the desktop are quite simple. First update your package cache and all packages using apt, and then use update-manager to upgrade to the next version of the Ubuntu.

1. Upgrade all packages

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade

If you get a message that "The following packages have been kept back" then you need to run apt-get with dist-upgrade to upgrade all packages.

$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

If the linux kernel is upgraded in the process, then you would have to restart the machine before proceeding.

2. Disable any failed PPA repositories

While doing apt-get update, if apt fails to download repository information for any ppa, then disable those ppas before continuing to update-manager.

For example

W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/kazam-team/stable-series/ubuntu/dists/saucy/main/binary-amd64/Packages  404  Not Found

W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/kazam-team/stable-series/ubuntu/dists/saucy/main/binary-i386/Packages  404  Not Found

E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

Disable those PPAs from "Software Sources" or Synaptic package manager. If the failed PPAs are not disabled, update-manager (in the next step) would complain - "Failed to download repository information".

3. Upgrade with update-manager (Software Updater)

Press Alt+F2 and type in "update-manager" without the quotes in the command box and press enter, or launch Software Updater from the Applications menu.

Alternatively run update-manager from the terminal if you prefer to.

$ sudo update-manager -d

Once update manager informs you that new version is available, go ahead to upgrade to it

update manager ubuntu 14.04

Next, a dialog box with the Release Notes would come up. Press the Upgrade button on it.

update manager downloading new packages on ubuntu 13.10

Upgrade Ubuntu on server

To upgrade Ubuntu on your remote server, it has to be done entirely from the command line, since no gui is available.

1. Prepare the system

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

2. Upgrade to 14.04

$ sudo apt-get install update-manager-core
$ sudo do-release-upgrade -d

That should complete the upgrade landing you on the brand new Ubuntu 14.04.

Other flavors

Other flavors of Ubuntu like Xubuntu, Lubuntu and Kubuntu are also ready to be upgraded to 14.04
Just follow the same instructions shown above to upgrade. Kubuntu users can use the Muon updater tool instead of Update Manager.

About Silver Moon

A Tech Enthusiast, Blogger, Linux Fan and a Software Developer. Writes about Computer hardware, Linux and Open Source software and coding in Python, Php and Javascript. He can be reached at [email protected].

3 Comments

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) released and its time to upgrade
  1. Myprovider

    5 january 2015 upgrade to ubuntu 14.04 still results in boot failures. Something todo with grub not upgrading to grub2? No instructions on how to prevent this from happening, besides working with the recovery tools from the live cd (which is no option in my case), the only solution is to restore 12.04 backup. Maybe next year there will be a stable ubuntu 14.04 precise release, or at least some hints in how to prevent grub from breaking….

  2. Don

    Hope this helps someone out there…

    First before you upgrade BACKUP your system!!

    I tried upgrading from Ubuntu 12.04 to 14.04 on 3 systems. 2 of the 3 left me with a blinking cursor after upgrade and reboot, systems were completely hosed. All 3 were servers, the 2 that failed were a 32-bit server and 64-bit server and I have no idea why, but the upgrade at least is not ready for primetime

    1. Myprovider

      5 january 2015 , 14.04 still breaks grub, i cannot yet find any clues how to prevent this, restoring 12.04 backup is the only fix (or boot from live cd which is not an option for my hosted machines)
      No hints on how to prevent 14.04 upgrade to completely kill your system….maybe next year 14.04 will be released stable ….. :-(

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