You Can Now Upgrade Ubuntu 21.04 to Ubuntu 21.10, Here's How

Ubuntu 21.10 is out today, so Ubuntu 21.04 users will probably want to upgrade their installations to the new release. And, for that, here’s a step-by-step tutorial with screenshots.

Dubbed Impish Indri, Ubuntu 21.10 introduces several new features and improvements, such as Linux kernel 5.13 for better hardware support, GNOME 40 desktop environment, Wayland session enabled for NVIDIA GPU users, as well as updated apps and internals with the most recent GNU/Linux technologies.

Ubuntu 21.04 “Hirsute Hippo” is supported for only nine months, until January 2022, so you might want to upgrade to a new release, Ubuntu 21.10 in this case, which is supported for another nine months, until July 2022.

But, before upgrading your Ubuntu 21.04 installations, you must first ensure that they’re up to date by installing all available updates using the Ubuntu Updater utility or by running the sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade command in the Terminal app.

After you’ve installed all the available updates and rebooted your computer, you can start the upgrade process by running the update-manager -c command in the Terminal app. Alternatively, you can press the ALT+F2 keyboard shortcut and paste or type the command there. You’ll see a notification that Ubuntu 21.10 is now available.

Click on the “Upgrade” button on that dialog and you’ll be prompted by a bigger dialog with more information about the Ubuntu 21.10 “Impish Indri” release. On the new window, click the “Upgrade” button to start the upgrade process, which will take up to an hour or more to complete.

During the entire upgrade process, you’ll see the dialog in the image below, so just follow the instructions on the screen until the upgrade process finishes.

But before the actual upgrade starts, you’ll be promoted by the dialog that shows you a summary of the packages that will be upgraded, installed, and removed. Click the “Start Upgrade” button to start the actual upgrade process!

You will also be notified that the lock screen has been disabled and will remain disabled until you reboot your computer. Click the “Close” button on the notification to close the dialog to continue with the upgrade.

Once all the upgrades have been installed, you will be asked if you want to keep or remove the obsolete packages. My recommendation here is to take a look at the list of obsolete packages and decide if you want to keep or remove them from your system.