The new Ubuntu 21.04 (Hirsute Hippo) has been released on 22 April 2021. Ubuntu 20.04 is long-term support and it will be supported for 5 years. Ubuntu 21.04 is not a long-term support release, meaning it will be supported until January 2022 (9 months).
Before upgrading to Ubuntu 21.04 version, you should be aware of the following things:
- The upgrade process will download a couple of GBs of data, so you will need a good internet connection.
- It is always recommended to backup your important files to an external hard disk.
- After upgrading to a newer version, you can revert to the older version.
- Upgrading to a newer version will disable the third-party repositories that you have added on your own.
In this post, we will show you how to upgrade Ubuntu 20.04 to Ubuntu 21.04.
Prerequisites
- A fresh Ubuntu 20.04 server on the Atlantic.Net Cloud Platform
- A root password configured on your server
Step 1 – Create Atlantic.Net Cloud Server
First, log in to your Atlantic.Net Cloud Server. Create a new server, choosing Ubuntu 20.04 as the operating system with at least 2GB RAM. Connect to your Cloud Server via SSH and log in using the credentials highlighted at the top of the page.
Once you are logged in to your Ubuntu 20.04 server, run the following command to update your base system with the latest available packages.
apt-get update -y
Step 2 – Update the System
Before starting, check the current version of Ubuntu with the following command:
lsb_release -a
You should see the following output:
Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Release: 20.04 Codename: focal
Next, update your system to the latest packages with the following command:
apt-get update -y apt-get upgrade -y apt-get dist-upgrade -y
Next, install the update-manager-core with the following command:
apt-get install update-manager-core -y
Next, remove all unwanted packages with the following command:
apt-get clean apt-get --purge autoremove
Next, restart your system to apply the changes:
reboot
Step 3 – Upgrade 20.04 to Ubuntu 21.04
Ubuntu 21.04 is a non-LTS version, so you will need to edit the file /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades and change the LTS version to normal:
nano /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades
Find the following line:
Prompt=lts
Replaced it with the following line:
Prompt=normal
Save and close the file when you are finished.
Run the following command to upgrade to Ubuntu 20.10 first. After that, follow the same steps to upgrade to Ubuntu 21.04.
do-release-upgrade
Follow the on-screen installation instruction to finish the process.
Once the up-gradation process has been completed, your system will be restarted automatically.
After restarting, log in to your system and verify the version of your Ubuntu with the following command:
lsb_release -a
Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 20.10 Release: 20.10 Codename: groovy
Now, run the following command to upgrade from Ubuntu 20.10 to 21.04:
do-release-upgrade -d
After restarting, log in to your system and verify the version of your Ubuntu with the following command:
lsb_release -a
You should see that your system will be updated to Ubuntu 21.04:
Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 21.04 Release: 21.04 Codename: hirsute
Conclusion
In the above guide, you learned how to upgrade from Ubuntu 20.04 to Ubuntu 21.04. Ubuntu 21.04 is a non-LTS version, so stick with Ubuntu 20.04 version if you need a stable version. If you don’t, give it a try on your virtual private server today!
