Hi,

I have Ubuntu 11.04 on one of my laptops and I was wondering is there any way to upgrade directly to 12.04 without losing my data? Ive heard that you cant but I just want to make sure.

...just run the update utility.

No, TheThingThatFlies heard right.
Ubuntu doesn't support skipping releases, except for LTS to LTS, of course.
So he'll have to update to 11.10 first...

Even with the "alternate" CD? I suppose its not that hard to go 11.04->11.10->12.04. Might want to backup before though.

PS, 12.10 is in alpha 2, doesn't seem like a long time 'til that upgrade, but its 1/4 year away.

The subject says 11.10 but the body says 11.04...
... wat.

Just use the alternate install CD or update manager -d option. It should work.

It's likely to break packages this way...

And yes, 6 months release cycle is just so fast... annoying for me.

Would a straight upgrade from 11.04 to 12.04 be safer? Or did you mean Alternate CD could cause packages to be broken?

I'm generally speaking.
Sounds like Ubuntu can't correctly manage release skipping, and I can't see why an upgrade option should be safer than another.

I just upgraded from 11.04 > 11.10 > 12.04 and lost nothing via the normal update manager

Ok. But really if you upgrade 11.04->11.10->12.04 your not skipping a release. But making backups before upgrade might be in order in any case.


Good to hear! Unfortunate that you couldn't skip 11.10, but at least it worked.

Sorry, I misread your post.
Of course 11.04->11.10->12.04 is the way to go.
I also said that in my first post.
For some reason I thought you was talking about upgrading 11.04 to 12.04 with the alternate CD.
I just woke up, so I'm not really brilliant right now.

My posts are not hard to misread So just 11.04->11.10->12.04.

Um, a 6 month release cycle isn't that fast. Mozilla Firefox releases a new version every 2 WEEKS! Also, the Ubuntu developers are in heart of it and we testers try out the new builds and get the release to you.

Ok, I know, you got to keep pace with application developers, who have really fast release cycles.
But I can't be bothered updating my OS every 6 months.
I'm ok with doing that about every year, even if I have to use outdated applications, as long as I can get security updates.
When I really need the latest version of some software I go for source code or unofficial repositories.

There are no NIGHTLY builds. Instead there were daily builds...........