Ubuntu 16.04 “Xenial Xerus” was just recently released and this brief tutorial is going to show you how to do an in-place upgrade easily.

An in-place upgrade from 15.10 to 16.04 is quite easy. All you need is a stable Internet connection and running few commands from your terminal.

If you’re running custom packages or have customized your system heavily, you’ll probably want to be cautious when upgrading. Besides those concerns, all should go perfect.

To get started with upgrading the first thing you’ll want to do is backup your systems. Important files and settings should be backed-up and recorded.

Next, run the commands below to update your current system before upgrading.. It’s always good to perform full update before doing an in-place upgrade of your systems.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade && sudo apt-get autoremove

Running the command above will search and update all packages currently installed on your system and remove obsolete software. It’s also a good practice to restart after doing a full update to your systems.

Next, run the commands to install Ubuntu upgrade manager package if your system doesn’t already have it.

sudo apt-get install update-manager-core

Then run the commands below to begin the upgrade process.

sudo do-release-upgrade

After that, you’ll be prompted with list of packages that would be upgraded and/or removed from your system.

Select Y for yes to accept and continue.

Now all you do is sit back and relax as your system upgrade. When all packages have been upgraded, you may be prompted to restart your computer.

Restart and logon to your new Ubuntu!

This same upgrade process can be applied to Ubuntu server as well. To upgrade Ubuntu server, run the upgrade manager command below.

sudo do-release-upgrade -d

That’s it!

How To Upgrade Ubuntu Server LTS To The Next Version

Enjoy!