How to Upgrade Minimal Install of Ubuntu 18.04 to 18.10?

18.04kubuntuubuntu-mateupgrade

I came across an interesting reddit post titled "How do I update while maintaining a minimal desktop?".

The poster ran sudo do-release-upgrade on a Kubuntu 18.04 system which was created using the minimal install option (available in Ubuntu 18.04 and Ubuntu Mate 18.04 as well).

The result was an upgrade to a full version of Kubuntu 18.10.

My question: is there any way for a user of a minimal install of 18.04 to upgrade to a minimal 18.10 or must such users do a clean minimal install of 18.10.

Best Answer

First of all I can't understand the trade-off of upgrading LTS to non-LTS.
LTS releases are highly recommended for real work. The non-LTS's 9 months support cycle is too short. Upgrading to non-LTS will result in 4 unneeded upgrades (18.04 LTS → 18.10 → 19.04 → 19.10 → 20.04 LTS) to next LTS.

TL;DR: but Ubuntu MATE upgrades normally with do-release-upgrade.

Below is a table for comparison for Ubuntu MATE:

|             Name           | Packages | max - min | upg.min - clean min |
|----------------------------+----------+-----------+---------------------|
| clean min UM 18.04.1       |  1678    |           |                     |
| upg.min UM 18.04.1 → 18.10 |  1715    |           |                     |
| max UM 18.04.1             |  1857    |    179    |                     |
| clean min UM 18.10         |  1598    |           |         117         |
| max UM 18.10               |  1826    |    228    |                     |

Legend:

  • clean min UM 18.04.1 - clean installation of minimal Ubuntu MATE 18.04.1;
  • upg.min UM 18.04.1 → 18.10 - clean installation of minimal Ubuntu MATE 18.04.1, upgraded to 18.10 with do-release-upgrade;
  • max UM 18.04.1 - clean installation of normal Ubuntu MATE 18.04.1;
  • clean min UM 18.10 - clean installation of minimal Ubuntu MATE 18.10;
  • max UM 18.10 - clean installation of normal Ubuntu MATE 18.10.

The result: yes, number of installed packages differ by 117 packages. But if I compare the list of packages from clean 18.10 and upgraded - they differ mostly by the libraries. No heavy packages were installed. You can see the diff.

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