Tuesday, 16 June 2026

Keeping Ubuntu Up to Date

Keeping Ubuntu up to date in WSL is a manual process (unless automated).

Even if automated, you may need a "revert to manual" process if automation breaks (for whatever reason).

Some points:
  • The /etc directory is your friend in all this
  • cat /etc/os-release - needs to be done before and after to check the release has been complete
  • You should upgrade regularly - not least because you need to get the latest security updates
To ensure the upgrade can happen successfully you need to check/edit the release-upgrades file.

sudo emacs -rv /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades

Change Prompt=never to Prompt=LTS (the latter checks to see if a new LTS release is available).

Useful commands:
  • sudo apt update
  • sudo apt full-upgrade
  • sudo do-release upgrade
Don't forget to check os-release for successful install.

Official documentation here.

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