Upgrade to Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail in less than 20 minutes without problems

Do you want to upgrade to the lastest and greatest version of the Ubuntu Linux operation system? You want to do the upgrade fast and avoid any hassles? Then, this guide is for you!

This free guide helps you t to get your system upgraded to Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail with all the lastest (kernel) drivers and software packages installed. The Ubuntu release notes can be found here.

Many people have used my previous guides (Upgrade Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10Upgrade Ubuntu 11.10 to 12.04Upgrade Ubuntu 12.04 to 12.10) and have sent me good feedback as you can see in the polls and comments of those guides. So, I promise you will have a nice and easy time upgrading to Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail.

I hope this guide will also be very useful to as many people as possible so feel free to tell your friends on facebook and spread the word!

Changes in Ubuntu 13.04

The changes from Ubuntu 12.10 to 13.04 in a nutshell:

Ubuntu 13.04 is the newest release of Ubuntu, released on April 25, 2014. In the desktop, performance on lightweight systems was a core focus for this cycle, as a result 13.04 delivers significantly faster response times in casual use, and a reduced memory footprint. Key desktop updates are; Unity 7, Upstart 1.8, LibreOffice 4.0, CUPS 1.6.2 and cups-filters 1.0.34 and Python 3.3. On the server, there are many new features including OpenStack Grizzly, updates to Juju, VMWare integration, Ceph 0.56.4, MongoDB 2.2.4. All versions use Linux kernel 3.8.8.

 

Step 1: Before Upgrading

Befort proceeding you might want to close all running applications to avoid any kind of problems.

Start Update Manager and apply all updates to make sure your system is up to date. If you got some kernel updates, you will have to reboot your system (Ubuntu will tell you if this is necessary). If not, you can proceed without a reboot.

Ubuntu Upgrade 13.04 Step 1

Ubuntu Upgrade 13.04 Step 2

Step 2: Upgrading

Now we are getting serious: Start the Update Manager and check again for updates on your system. You should see the following screen.

Ubuntu Upgrade 13.04 Step 3

However, if you don’t, you can force the update by entering the following command into the terminal:

sudo update-manager -p

Click on Upgrade… You need to enter your password in order to proceed. You’ll be shown a welcome note from Raring Ringtail. Just click on Upgrade again and wait a few moments…

Ubuntu Upgrade 13.04 Step 4

Ubuntu Upgrade 13.04 Step 5

You are ready to start the main upgrade process. You will be shown how much data will have be downloaded (in my case: 751MB). The amount of time this will take depends heavily on your internet connection speed. It took around three minutes on my connection (200 Mbit) to download all new packages. Click on Start Upgrade to proceed:

Ubuntu Upgrade 13.04 Step 6 Ubuntu Upgrade 13.04 Step 7 Ubuntu Upgrade 13.04 Step 8

If you encounter a dialogue windows like this, just click on Forward.

Ubuntu Upgrade 13.04 Step 9

After downloading the Ubuntu 13.04 packages to your machine, the installation of the new packages begins. My machine uses an SSD (solid state disk) instead of an ordinary hard disk so the installation only took a couple of minutes.

Ubuntu Upgrade 13.04 Step 10

You might have conflicting configuration files (for the database MongoDB in my case) if you adjusted some configuration files deep under the hood. You will have to choose if you want to replace the custom configuration files (edited by you) with the new default config file from the package, or keep the old one… I tend to click Replace and care about the configuration files after the upgrade.

Ubuntu Upgrade 13.04 Step 11

During the upgrade, compiz crashed so all windows lost their „decoration“ border. Nothing to worry about… :D

Ubuntu Upgrade 13.04 Step 12

When all packages have been upgraded, you will be asked to remove the unnecessary ones. You should remove obsolete packages to save disk space. So click on Remove.

Ubuntu Upgrade 13.04 Step 13

Then you will be prompted to restart your system. Click on Restart Now to reboot and finish the installation.

Ubuntu Upgrade 13.04 Step 14

After your system comes back to the desktop you can verify your successful upgrade by clicking on „System Preferences“ > „Details“ and you should see the new version of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu Upgrade 13.04 Step 15

Congratulations and welcome to your new Ubuntu 13.04 system! If you have a fast internet connection and your machine has an SSD you should not have spent more than 20 minutes to get through the update process. Enjoy!

Let me know what you think of my upgrade guide and of course of Ubuntu 13.04 in the comments section.

If you want to join a discussion which platform (Windows, Linux, Mac) is YOUR platform of choice and why, you might want to check out the article Your choice: Windows, Linux or Mac OS X – YOU decide!

[poll id=“6″]

If you found this guide useful you can like maknesium.de on facebook and you’ll get notified when I upload new guides. Thank you for reading!

11 Gedanken zu „Upgrade to Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail in less than 20 minutes without problems“

  1. I had to go into the settings and change the „Notify me of a new Ubuntu version“ setting from „for long-term support versions“ to „for any new version“ to make the Update Manager show me the offer to upgrade.

  2. Good, some years ago this had bugs. Anyway I might simply back up some files from home, like most hidden .* config files and do a clean install. This should not take longer but probably is more clean and smaller.

  3. After the install, I rebooted and signed in and did not have the top bar (with the time, etc) and could not click on any icon in Unity bar, then the mouse disappeared. Had to hard boot. Same problems even after another install. Is there an issue with nVidia cards?

    1. Yep there might be issues with proprietary graphics drivers. Just try to reinstall the tested version of the driver that comes with the Ubuntu distribution. You cqn do thus even with no graphics on the command line.

  4. Why in 2013 does UBUNTU have such a cheap amateur 1990’s rubbish looking GUI???? At least Windows 8 for all its hate has a modern looking desktop.

  5. Good post but I was wondering if you could write a
    litte more on this subject? I’d be very grateful if you could elaborate a little
    bit further. Kudos!

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