Ubuntu – Upgrading Sublime text 3

SublimeText does not store its settings and plugins (at least those you downloaded using PackageControl) in the same directory as the editor itself (/usr/lib/sublime-text-2 in your case) - the settings are stored in /home/(yourusername)/.config/sublime-text-2/, so they won't be overridden when you install a new version.

But, just in case, you can make a backup copy of your current install before unpacking. Something like this would do:

sudo mv /usr/lib/sublime-text-2 /usr/lib/sublime-text-2.old
sudo tar jxf "/var/cache/sublime-text-2/Sublime Text 2 Build 2181.tar.bz2" /usr/lib

Just to note: installing stuff from tarballs into /usr is very wrong, if you must use system directories use /opt at least. Otherwise SublimeText runs just fine from a location in your home directory. Here I wrote a bit more on the matter: https://askubuntu.com/a/172753/14564

I just had this issue as well and it turned out it was just the unity link file that needed to be updated. The link was created before I registered sublime so the link name gets created with the UNREGISTERED string.

I was able to fix this by modifying the link file.

vim ~/.local/share/applications/sublime_text.desktop

You can then change the Name= entry

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Name=Sublime Text -- UNREGISTERED
Icon=sublime_text.png
Exec=/opt/sublime_text/sublime_text
StartupNotify=false
StartupWMClass=Sublime_text
OnlyShowIn=Unity;
X-UnityGenerated=true