Easily upgrading to Ubuntu 9.04

Image via Wikipedia

The release candidate of Ubuntu 9.04 was announced yesterday, so I took the opportunity to install it on a machine of mine that's been running Ubuntu for about a year.  This machine had been originally installed with Ubuntu 8.04 and was later upgraded to Ubuntu 8.10.  My main interest, in addition to checking out the new features in 9.04,  was to review the upgrade process between major versions of Ubuntu, a procedure that can of course be problematic at times on other operating systems.

The upgrade instructions provided at Ubuntu's community documentation site looked straightforward enough, and as promised the upgrade was as simple as starting the graphical update manager by running update-manager --devel-release then clicking a few buttons and waiting a little while for everything to download and update.  After this, a restart was necessary and the computer booted straight to the new version without issue.

What struck me as extremely convenient during this process was with the network upgrade there was no initial download, no CD or DVD to burn, and at least for me no incompatibilities or corrupted settings.  After booting, my desktop - including all its customizations - was exactly how I had left it.  The attention to detail the Ubuntu team has put into the upgrade process results in a huge time savings for Ubuntu users and as someone who regularly runs several different operating systems this convenience is something I can greatly appreciate.  Of course, a significant portion of this should be credited to the Debian team and their APT package manager which has been laying this groundwork for over 10 years.

UPDATE:  With Ubuntu 9.04 final available today (Apr 23) the above instructions will upgrade you to the final release just as easily.  Or, if you've already performed the steps above to upgrade to the release candidate, you are a quick Update Manager launch away from getting the latest bits.  Enjoy!