14 DAY TRIAL // Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) was released today as Ubuntu's latest and greatest release, but it's coming with a different desktop environment by default, so we've prepared a quick and straightforward tutorial on how to upgrade from Ubuntu 17.04.
Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus) was released earlier this year on April 13, and it's only supported until January 2018, so upgrading to Ubuntu 17.10 is a must. But, before we get into any details of the upgrade process, you should know that Ubuntu 17.10 is using GNOME 3 as default desktop environment.
What this means for Ubuntu 17.04 users is that they'll probably have a pretty hard time migrating from Unity to GNOME 3, though Unity won't be removed during the upgrade process and will be available as an option via the login screen if you still want to use it or you don't find GNOME as familiar as you'd like it to be.
According to Ubuntu contributor Didier Roche, no packages that you have installed will be removed during the upgrade process, but some of Unity's features were slightly changed to accommodate the new, default GNOME Shell session, so don't expect to have the same Unity experience after the upgrade to Ubuntu 17.10.
Here's how to upgrade Ubuntu 17.04 to Ubuntu 17.10
All right, if decided that you want to upgrade from Ubuntu 17.04 to Ubuntu 17.10, first thing you need to do is to create a recent backup of your most important files (documents, music, game saves, videos, etc.) on an external drive. Once you achieve that, feel free to install any available updates on your Ubuntu 17.04 system.
Now that your Ubuntu 17.04 installation is up-to-date, you can start the upgrade process by opening the Terminal utility from the Unity Launcher and execute the "update-manager -c" command (without quotes). The Software Updater tool will pop up saying "New distribution release '17.10' is available."
Click on the "Upgrade" button and follow the on-screen instructions for a successful upgrade. At the end of the upgrade process you'll have to reboot your PC. That's it, you can now enjoy Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) on your personal computer, and remember to choose your favorite session from the login screen.