I just installed a new version of Ubuntu and I want to roll it back to the previous version.
How can I do that? Is that even possible?
downgraderelease-management
I just installed a new version of Ubuntu and I want to roll it back to the previous version.
How can I do that? Is that even possible?
The solution is quite complicated so make sure you read and proceed carefully. As preparation to this make sure you enabled all packet sources so your /etc/apt/sources.list
looks like this and do an upgrade:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
reboot
Then as a first step, you need to remove the existing version of gedit. To do so run the following commands in your terminal (ctrl+alt+t):
# this installs the build dependencies
sudo apt-get build-dep gedit gedit-plugins
sudo apt-get install moreutils
# this uninstalls the 3.18.3 version of gedit, gedit-dev,
# gedit-plugins and gedit-common and should get rid of everything else
# installed for gedit
sudo apt-get remove gedit gedit-dev gedit-plugins gedit-common
Now prepare a directory to work in. For convenience we do that in our home directory.
# creating directory and switching to it
mkdir ~/gedit-downgrade
cd ~/gedit-downgrade
Next step is to create a wget-list
file to make the download easier (you can copy and paste the whole field into your terminal). If you're not using a 64-bit system you might want to find the proper links for i386 here.
cat > wget-list << "EOF"
http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gedit/gedit-common_3.10.4-0ubuntu13_all.deb
http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gedit/gedit_3.10.4-0ubuntu13_amd64.deb
http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gedit/gedit-dev_3.10.4-0ubuntu13_amd64.deb
http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/universe/g/gedit-developer-plugins/gedit-developer-plugins_0.5.15-0ubuntu1_all.deb
http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/universe/g/gedit-latex-plugin/gedit-latex-plugin_3.8.0-3build1_all.deb
http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/universe/g/gedit-plugins/gedit-plugins_3.10.1-1ubuntu3_amd64.deb
http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/universe/g/gedit-r-plugin/gedit-r-plugin_0.8.0.2-Gtk3-Python3-1ubuntu1_all.deb
http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/universe/g/gedit-source-code-browser-plugin/gedit-source-code-browser-plugin_3.0.3-3_all.deb
http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/universe/g/gedit-valencia-plugin/gedit-valencia-plugin_0.8.0-0ubuntu2_amd64.deb
http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/universe/r/rabbitvcs/rabbitvcs-gedit_0.16-1_all.deb
http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/universe/s/supercollider/supercollider-gedit_3.6.6~repack-2-1build1_all.deb
EOF
Now you have that wget-list
file, you can download everything in one go by typing wget -i wget-list
, let the files download and then begin your installation.
Please follow below steps one by one and if you run into dependency errors simply do sudo apt-get remove <package-name>
which reflects the package giving trouble, then install the dependencies by hand with sudo apt-get install <package-name>
then do the dpkg line again. Do not, and I mean do not run sudo apt-get -f install
while you're trying this installation: it will mess everything up.
Now, let's begin with the essential packages (tested and working on a clean 16.04 LTS installation):
# install gedit-common (essential needed)
sudo dpkg -i gedit-common_3.10.4-0ubuntu13_all.deb
# install gedit (essential needed)
sudo dpkg -i gedit_3.10.4-0ubuntu13_amd64.deb
# install gedit-dev (essential needed)
sudo dpkg -i gedit-dev_3.10.4-0ubuntu13_amd64.deb
# install gedit-plugins (essential needed)
# here are some steps needed follow them carefully
# unpacking the .deb file
sudo dpkg-deb -R gedit-plugins_3.10.1-1ubuntu3_amd64.deb tmp
# editing tmp/DEBIAN/control:
# change 'python3 (<< 3.5), python3 (>= 3.4~), python3.4' to 'python3 (>= 3.5~), python3.5'
sed 's/python3 (<< 3\.5), python3 (>= 3\.4~), python3\.4/python3 (>= 3.5~), python3.5/' tmp/DEBIAN/control | sudo sponge tmp/DEBIAN/control
# editing tmp/DEBIAN/postinst
# change 'py3compile -p gedit-plugins /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gedit/plugins -V 3.4' to
# 'py3compile -p gedit-plugins /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gedit/plugins -V 3.5'
sed 's/3\.4/3.5/' tmp/DEBIAN/postinst | sudo sponge tmp/DEBIAN/postinst
# packing a new .deb file
sudo dpkg-deb -b tmp gedit-plugins_3.10.1-1ubuntu4_amd64.deb
# changing ownership of the new .deb file replace username with your username
sudo chown username:username gedit-plugins_3.10.1-1ubuntu4_amd64.deb
# removing tmp
sudo rm -rfv tmp
# installing it
sudo dpkg -i gedit-plugins_3.10.1-1ubuntu4_amd64.deb
The following packages are only optional and you should be able to install them easily, the dependencies to download are given and tested on a clean 16.04 LTS install like the above.
# install gedit-developer-plugins (optional)
sudo apt-get install python-pocket-lint
sudo dpkg -i gedit-developer-plugins_0.5.15-0ubuntu1_all.deb
# install gedit-latex-plugin (optional)
sudo apt-get install rubber
sudo dpkg -i gedit-latex-plugin_3.8.0-3build1_all.deb
# install gedit-r-plugin (optional but needs gedit-plugins)
sudo dpkg -i gedit-r-plugin_0.8.0.2-Gtk3-Python3-1ubuntu1_all.deb
# install gedit-source-code-browser-plugin (optional)
sudo apt-get install ctags
sudo dpkg -i gedit-source-code-browser-plugin_3.0.3-3_all.deb
# install gedit-valencia-plugin (optional)
# unpacking .deb file
sudo dpkg-deb -R gedit-valencia-plugin_0.8.0-0ubuntu2_amd64.deb tmp
# edit tmp/DEBIAN/control
# change 'libvala-0.28-0 (>= 0.15.1)' to 'libvala-0.30-0 (>= 0.15.1)'
# change 'libvte-2.90-9 (>= 1:0.27.2)' to 'libvte-2.91-0 (>= 0.27.2)'
sed -e 's/libvala-0\.28-0 (>= 0\.15\.1)/libvala-0.30-0 (>= 0.15.1)/' -e 's/libvte-2\.90-9 (>= 1:0\.27\.2)/libvte-2.91-0 (>= 0.27.2)/' tmp/DEBIAN/control | sudo sponge tmp/DEBIAN/control
# packing a new .deb file
sudo dpkg-deb -b tmp gedit-valencia-plugin_0.8.0-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb
# changing ownership of the new .deb file replace username with your username
sudo chown username:username gedit-valencia-plugin_0.8.0-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb
# removing tmp
sudo rm -rfv tmp
# installing it
sudo dpkg -i gedit-valencia-plugin_0.8.0-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb
# install rabbitvcs-gedit (optional)
sudo apt-get install rabbitvcs-core
sudo dpkg -i rabbitvcs-gedit_0.16-1_all.deb
# install supercollider-gedit (optional)
sudo apt-get install supercollider-language
sudo dpkg -i supercollider-gedit_3.6.6~repack-2-1build1_all.deb
Now you have to make sure the packages won't be changed when you run an update, so ensure only to state the packages you have installed:
# now protecting this all from upgrading
sudo apt-mark hold gedit-common gedit gedit-dev gedit-developer-plugin gedit-latex-plugin gedit-plugins gedit-r-plugin gedit-source-code-browser-plugin gedit-valencia-plugin rabbitvcs-gedit supercollider-gedit
# removing protection from upgrades
sudo apt-mark unhold gedit-common gedit gedit-dev gedit-developer-plugin gedit-latex-plugin gedit-plugins gedit-r-plugin gedit-source-code-browser-plugin gedit-valencia-plugin rabbitvcs-gedit supercollider-gedit
# simply do an upgrade
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Yes I made even a script to automate the whole process, you can get it here or by:
wget https://github.com/Videonauth/gdowngrade/blob/master/gdowngrade.sh
Then to run it:
chmod 755 ./gdowngrade.sh
sudo ./gdowngrade.sh
This will create a custom file for you called gupgrade.sh
which allows you to reverse the whole process by simply:
sudo ./gupgrade.sh
Best Answer
Downgrading releases is possible to some extent. With enough fighting, it can be done (see some of the other answers here for the the technical details).
However the result you end up with is not the same as what you had before the upgrade. During an upgrade certain one-way changes are made to make new packages happy and downgrading them won't reverse those edits. It's impossible to guarantee a downgrade will work at all, let alone if it'll be stable.
In short, your easiest option is always going to be a reinstall. Don't think of it as a chore, look at it as a nice opportunity to trim down on packages and configure things better.
If you want to test things in the future and you fear you might have issues, always make sure you do the following:
/home/
within the same partition as your installation is a recipe for a headache if you're constantly upgrading/downgrading things. Push it off to another disk or at least another partition so that when you do need to reinstall, you really just need to set up the mount.