How to upgrade from Linux Mint 19.3 to Linux Mint 20 LTS Ulyana

Linux Mint 20 (Ulyana) LTS was released on Saturday, 27 June 2020. Linux Mint is one of the most popular Desktop Linux Distro comes bundled with a variety of free and open-source applications which provides out-of-the-box multimedia support such as multimedia codecs. Linux Mint 20 is not available for 32-bit to download or upgrade. So before you upgrade MAKE A COMPLETE SYSTEM BACKUP using TimeShift and Mint’s default backup tool. We will walk you through step-by-step procedure to upgrade from Linux Mint 19.3 to Mint 20 in this article. Also note that you need to have Linux Mint 19.3 not 19.1 or 19.2 to upgrade to Linux Mint 20. Please click here to know how to find version number using command line. 

Check your system architecture

To upgrade into Linux Mint 20 you need to have 64-bit architecture of Linux Mint 19.3 If the output of command below is “
Command to check architecture (Click on picture to enlarge it)
$ sudo dpkg –print-architecture

2. Updates and Install every Single packages

You need to update and install every packages to upgrade to Linux Mint 20 (Click on picture to enlarge it).
$ sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

3. Alternate way to update system and packages using Update Manager.

. Lunch the Update Manager with “Menu >> Administration >> Update Manager (Click on picture to enlarge it)
Press the “Refresh” button to update the cache.
Click the “Select All” button to select all updates.
Press the “Install Updates” button.
. Follow the instructions from the Update Manager and install all updates until the manager tells you “Your system is up to date.”
.Reboot the computer.

4. Last backup or snapshot before upgrading into Linux Mint 20

Lunch Timeshift Menu >> Administration >> All >> Timeshift
Follow the wizard to select a destination for snapshots (Click on picture to enlarge it).
Click on “Create” button for manual snapshot.
Creating snapshot

5. Recommended to disable PPAs and third-party repositories.

If the PPA or repository is not available for the new version, it may impact the upgrade procedure with broken dependencies.
Lunch Software Sources Menu >> Administration >> Software Sources (Click on picture to enlarge it)
. Disable PPA & Repository

6. Install the upgrade tool (commandline tool mintupgrade)

Now the system is updated, backup is taken. Now it is time to install command line tool mintupgrade to upgrade from Linux Mint 19.3 to Linux Mint 20 (Click on picture to enlarge it).
$ sudo apt install mintupgrade

7. Upgrade sanity check

Once upgrade tool is installed, following command to check and see the kind of changes will be made on your system and packages to be upgraded. Also shows the packages that cannot be upgraded and must be removed (Click on picture to enlarge it).
$ mintupgrade check
APT will now calculate the package changes necessary to upgrade to Linux Mint 20 ‘Ulyana’. If conflicts are detected and APT is unable to perform the upgrade, take note of the packages causing the issue, remove them, and restart the upgrade. Pay close attention to what appears on the screen, particularly the packages being removed. Take note of any you may wish to reinstall after the upgrade. Remove the packages they are no longer needed with command “sudo apt autoremove“. The autoremove option removes packages that were automatically installed.

8. Download Linux Mint 20 packages

Run the following command to download Linux Mint 20 packages on your system. This may take sometime to download the packages, it will prompt message as “command ‘download’ completed successfully”.
$ mintupgrade download

9. Install the Upgrades

Now you have downloaded the packages, upgrade to Linux Mint 20 using command below. Give some time to install new packages and upgrade Linux Mint to Newer version. Don’t interrupt, you will be prompted to restart the system once upgrade is done.
$ mintupgrade upgrade
Note: This is operation is non-reversible.
This may take several time. During upgrade you will be prompted to restart services without asking as shown below. Click on “Yes” button.
Reboot your system. It took more than 2 hours for me to upgrade system
$ sudo reboot
Post upgrade to Linux Mint 20 LTS, verify your system.
Conclusion: In this tutorial, we have seen How to upgrade from Linux Mint 19.3 to Linux Mint 20 LTS. Big thanks for reading all the way to the end. Please share it with Your Friends & Help Someone… and also like our facebook page. Let me hear your thoughts in the comment box below!!!

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