Step By Step To Upgrade Ubuntu from 18.04 to 19.04 using Command Lines

This is tutorial to upgrade your Ubuntu from 18.04 LTS to 19.04 using 'do-release-upgrade' command lines. The upgrade process is divided to two steps, first to upgrade to 18.10, and second to upgrade to 19.04. In other words, we will upgrade from Bionic Beaver to Cosmic Cuttlefish to Disco Dingo. The whole process takes approximately 3 hours and 30 minutes on broadband internet connection and Solid State Disk (SSD) storage. Go ahead and have a safe upgrade. Finally, happy working!

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More about Ubuntu 19.04: Download Links | Install Guide | Bootable-Making Guide | Upgrade 14.04 to 16.04 | Upgrade 16.04 to 18.04 | WTDAI | GNOME 3.32 | Desktop Extensions | Dash to Panel | Dash to Dock | Tray Icons

Requirements

• Ubuntu 18.04 installed on your computer.
• At least 5GB free space.
• Stable internet access. Preferable the fast one.
• To be present in front of computer display during upgrade.

Caution!

• This tutorial is best for experimental installed Ubuntu system and I recommend you not to upgrade your daily for-work desktop system unless you know what you are doing and you accept everything may happen to your system.
• Upgrading 18.04 to 19.04 means upgrading an LTS to a nonLTS Ubuntu version. LTS is supported for 5 years while nonLTS is supported for 9 month.
• Upgrading is not straight, but it's twice, as you need first to upgrade to 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish and finally to 19.04 Disco Dingo. 
• Upgrading costs a lot of internet bandwidth. Make sure you have at least --for safety-- 5GB data or more to upgrade. 

Summary

• 1. Check your disk space
• 2. Disable third party repositories
• 3. Full update "bionic"
• 4. Upgrade to "cosmic"
• 5. First result
• 6. Upgrade to "disco"
• 7. Final result

1. Check your disk space

Use command line below to know your free space ("Avail"). For example, I have at least 14GB free disk space for my root partition and that is safe.

$ df -h /

After upgrade, free space becomes 12G, as I upgraded from a freshly installed 18.04. It means for a pure system, the whole upgrade needs at least 2GB free space. To be safe, I recommend you to prepare at least 5GB free space for the downloaded packages and package installation.

$ df -h /

2. Disable Third Party Repositories

If you had ever installed PPA repositories, for example, you need to disable them first in order to upgrade your system safely. Run 'Software & Updates' from menu or press Alt_F2 and run software-properties-gtk to see repository settings. Third-party repositories (if any) are configurable in the second tab Other Software. Disable them all.

3. Full Update 18.04 "Bionic"

Before changing the OS version to the newest one, we need to make sure current OS version has the latest software packages. These processes are taking a long time e.g. more than 1 hours if you have many apps installed so you need to stand by in front of your screen to respond to any question may occur.

$ sudo apt-get  update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

4. Upgrade to 18.10 "Cosmic"

First release upgrade, do the command line do-release-upgrade to automatically change your OS version 18.04 to latest OS version available 19.04. This process takes the most time in my practice by downloading 800MB data in approximately 2 hours. Your practice may be different so be prepared.

$ sudo do-release-upgrade

5. First Result

After first restart, you will see Ubuntu turned 18.10. Continue to the next step.

6. Upgrade to 19.04 "Disco"

This is the second OS upgrade, do the command line do-release-upgrade to upgrade from 18.10 to 19.04.

$ sudo do-release-upgrade

7. Final Result

Successful upgrade should indicate your OS version to be Ubuntu 19.04 and your wallpaper changed from Bionic Beaver to Disco Dingo. See picture below. Congratulations!

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