The rocky road to upgrading Ubuntu Linux 24.04

I like Ubuntu Linux 24.04 Long Term Support (LTS), aka Noble Numbat. It’s running well on my 2020-era Dell Precision 3451, which is powered by an Intel 8-core 3GHz i7-9700 CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD.

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 With the release of Ubuntu 24.04.1, I was ready to recommend Ubuntu 22.04 (LTS) users update their systems. Fortunately, I didn’t write about it because I was mistaken. Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, temporarily paused upgrades from Ubuntu 22.04 LTS to the latest release. 

Canonical explained in an email that critical bugs were affecting the upgrade process. Specifically, “The upgrade was disabled due to a critical bug in ubuntu-release-upgrader in the way it’s using the apt solver.” 

Whoops!

This decision came just days after the first point release when Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS was made available, and upgrades were officially enabled.

Double whoops!

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That’s important because most business Ubuntu users who upgrade their systems wait for the .1 releases to make their move. That’s because any bugs from the initial release have been found and fixed in the .1 edition. I’d expected this upgrade to be the biggest to date for Ubuntu. 

Not, mind you, that you need to upgrade. After all, Canonical offers 12 years of support for its LTS Ubuntu versions. That means, for example, you can still be running Ubuntu 24.04 in 2038.

Even before Canonical put a hold on upgrades, there had been widespread reports of upgrade failures. Users attempting the upgrade have encountered various issues, including:

This isn’t the first time Ubuntu 24.04 upgrades have faced challenges. When the initial release launched in April, users upgrading from Ubuntu 23.10 were advised against doing so due to different critical bugs.

Canonical’s development team has now stated that they’ve resolved these issues. You can now upgrade straight from Ubuntu 22.04 to Ubuntu 24.04.1.  

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Color me cautious. I’ll let other brave folks give this a try. In the meantime, if you tried it and your system ended up messed up, Canonical recommends you run 

$ sudo apt install –fix-broken

 to remove the old kernel headers and make apt operational again.

For those eager to experience Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, I recommend doing a fresh installation using the ISO image, which is unaffected by these upgrade-specific issues.

This situation reminds me of the complexities involved in major operating system upgrades. You never know when something may go awry. For businesses, it also highlights the importance of thorough testing and the value of a staged rollout approach for critical software updates. It’s annoying when you run into this kind of trouble on your standalone desktop; it’s a serious waste of time and money if it happens to your production Ubuntu servers.