Upgrade Ubuntu 18.10 to 19.04 Disco Dingo

Ubuntu 19.04 Disco Dingo is expected to release next month in April 2019. The key features of new release include GNOME 3.32, Linux kernel 5.0, performance improvements, bug fixes, packages update, and more.

Prerequisite

Before you start upgrading to Ubuntu 19.04, make sure that you are running a fully updated version of Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish at your machine. If you want to upgrade from Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, you first need to upgrade Ubuntu system to 18.10. You can always check the current Ubuntu version by running the following command in your terminal:

$ cat /etc/os-release

Tip: Before you start the upgrade procedure, it is recommended to create a backup of your important data. For more on how to clone the hard drive, please check this tutorial.

Upgrade to Ubuntu 19.04

First of all, run the following commands in your terminal to update and upgrade the current Ubuntu 18.10 system:

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

Next, remove all no longer required packages:

$ sudo autoremove

Since Ubuntu 19.04 is not yet publicly available, you need to change the release upgradation policy. By default, Ubuntu release upgrader is configured to only upgrade to newest LTS release. Open release-upgrades file in your terminal by running the following command:

$ sudo nano /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades

As you can see, there are three options available for release upgrade.

• never - never upgrade to new release
• normal - upgrade from any release to new release
• lts - only upgrade from LTS to LTS release

Set Prompt=normal to hide No new release found message and save the file. You need root privileges to make changes to this file.

Execute the following command to upgrade your system to Ubuntu 19.04:

$ sudo do-release-upgrade -d

-d flag refers to development branch and it is only required when you attempt to upgrade to an unofficial release. You no longer need this flag after Ubuntu 19.04 is officially released.

Once the upgrade process ends, you must reboot your system to load new Linux kernel.

That's all folks! If you have any question or suggestion, please send me a tweet anytime.

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