How to upgrade Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS via terminal

Desktop image of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)

Canonical has released Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) on 23rd April 2020. It is a long-term support version. In this tutorial, we will learn how to upgrade Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. We can also download Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) from the official webpage and we can do a fresh installation. The objective of this tutorial is to upgrade the existing Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) to the latest Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa).

Step:1

Before going upgrading, we check the existing version by running the following command in the terminal:

$ cat /etc/lsb-release

The probable output will be as follows:

DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=18.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=bionic
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS"

This confirms the existing version of the installed OS.

Step:2

Now, we will update the existing packages. To install all the updates for the existing packages, we run the following commands in the terminal:

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt upgrade -y