This Blog is about my impressions of an LINUX operating-system upgrade on my Netbook (= small weak laptop) from Lubuntu 14.04 LTS to 16.04. "LTS" means long-term-support, they guarantee you 5 years of minor upgrades. Nevertheless all two years a new major Ubuntu is released, and with it all its variants like Lubuntu (L = "Light").
The LINUX Experiment
LINUX somehow is like an experiment that tries out how many people can work together before the software they produce collapses (like the Tower of Babel did). They are working on a complex and living thing, it's an operating-system. Permanently new hardware has to be integrated and old to be maintained, permanently applications require new capabilities, to be provided by new and (!) old hardware.
Because I believe in this experiment, I always drive my computer by LINUX. It is fast, it is useful, it is free!
Just one thing frightens me periodically, and that's the major version upgrade. With Ubuntu, the currently leading free UNIX, this happens all two years. It was more than once that my LINUX did not boot any more after such an upgrade.
Why Upgrade?
Now you could say "Why being afraid? Just stay on your old version that works perfectly for your hardware!".
No, you can't. Because what you want to do most of all with your computer is use the internet, browse pages containing videos, and be on the always growing communication facilities. Internet applications demand more and more resources, and change technologies quickly and relentlessly.
- Web browsers claim the operating system.
- The operating system claims the hardware to do more and more,
- and this claims us to upgrade.
So an operating system upgrade may not be enough, at some point in time you will even need to buy a new computer, just to be able to use the internet!
Version Information
First thing you want to find out is what operating system version you have. But there is not just one version, there are two versions.
- LINUX kernel version, e.g. 4.4.0-34-generic
- Ubuntu version, e.g. 16.04
These versions rarely can be seen together:
- any UNIX kernel version can be displayed by the command-line
uname -a
- the Ubuntu version can be displayed by clicking system-menu "System Settings" - "Details".
In Lubuntu, this can be found in system-menu under "System Tools" - "System Performance and Benchmark" - "Operating System".
Online Upgrade
Already having a LINUX on your computer, you can upgrade online over the internet. Just search for the "Software Update" menu item in your system menu. It will automatically search for updates as soon as launched, and present you a list of updates. And it will also report possible kernel upgrades.
Before you make a major version upgrade, be sure that all minor updates are installed.
Also make a backup of /boot/grub/grub.cfg, in case you modified this to get a smarter boot menu.
When you started the major upgrade, it runs the same way as the minor upgrade, with the difference that a restart is required after.
Be aware that your computer is now in a critical state, make sure this upgrade is not interrupted, and your internet connection can endure this!
Some Upgrade Observations
The upgrade-tool told me that it's installing the new Ubuntu, not Lubuntu. Which was not nice, because I know that Ubuntu does not work on my Netbook, the hardware is too weak. Finally it turned out that it was NOT an upgrade to Ubuntu ....
To watch upgrade-progress, I clicked into the dialog to open the log messages terminal. Strange things appeared here:
.... This likely means that your installation is broken. Try running the command ....
So some upgrade author decided to break the whole installation?!
These messages seem to not mean what they say. A common appearance in software development.
It looks like LINUX experts are already used to such wrong alerts.
I decided to ignore them, because the terminal messages are not even visible by default.
Another thing are these GUI-dialogs suddenly coming up and asking you for "Yes" or "No". You have been going to the kitchen while these downloads proceed so slowly, being back you find it not continued.
So still you need to attend such an upgrade, you can not simply let it run.
While watching the terminal log messages I suddenly saw red and blue text on bottom, and no more progress.
A closer look showed me that the upgrader again is waiting for my decision,
this time not through a GUI-dialog but a terminal-dialog (programmed using the
curses-library,
the Debian guys do such things).
You can not commit such a dialog by mouse.
You need to navigate to the OK button using the TAB key, and then press ENTER on it.
So be prepared for all kinds of oddities here. Considering that the log messages terminal not even is visible by default, this is quite demanding!
Summary
After all, my desktop survived the upgrade, and even the boot menu
was not again filled with unneeded old version items.
So far the experiment ran quite well :-)
LINUX upgrades always grew stabler over the years, especially since Ubuntu. Hope this will keep on, without LINUX this planet would be a lot darker.
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