I am currently running Ubuntu 22.04 LTS server. It seems to me that there would be no compelling reason to upgrade to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS since version 22.04 is supported until 2027. It seems that it would make sense to skip version 24.04 and wait until version 26.04 LTS and consider upgrading in 2027. Is there any reason that I should even consider upgrading to version 22.04. It seems that the only advantage would be if I was using the system as a desktop but since this is the server version and I cannot see any benefit to upgrading. Thanks for your help.
Take this with a grain of salt. Ubuntu follows Debian. If you check out the Debian documentation you will see that support is provided by a third party IF someone pays for it. Iâm not saying someone like Ubuntu doesnât keep up on this because I donât know.
My personal take? Upgrading is painful. Waiting only makes it more painful. Pick your pain level.
I donât get the fuss about a âmigration problemââjust spin up a new instance, copy the files, check everything, and then update the DNS. The downtime will be way less than a distro upgrade, which can take 5-10 minutes even on powerful bare metal servers, not to mention slower cloud instancesâwith two instances running at the same time, thereâs no downtime at all.
Memory muscle of long nights when it didnât go well and walking out to a sunrise? And the night time updates were because we had customers that would literally call if we had to reboot a server because they noticed it was âdownâ.
I donât either it is always (as so often) about forward planning.
A critical production server needs a well thought through approach - as always plan for the inevitable never a last minute thing to do when you are off on vacation or delegate to a junior
I have updated our email servers from Ubuntu 20 to 22 and now to 24. It has been straight forward. To be on the safe side I have made a snapshot of the server before the upgrade, in case something went wrong, but I have been lucky and have not have to use it
On the email servers no. But the question was about upgrading Linux. The email server are pure iredmail. No need for any control panel, ssh is enough. The webmin/virualmin seervers I do different. Get a new server, install the OP and Webmin/Virtualmin and then transfer the servers
Which may have webmin/virtualmin installed, which is most likely as the question was placed on this forum and not a general linux forum, but the op did not leave any system details
I am sorry, here are the details of my server. Yes, the server runs Virtualmin. I see no compelling reason to upgrade to 24.04, so I am going to skip that upgrade and wait for 26.04. Unless someone can give me a reason that I should upgrade that I am missing.
you can not directly upgrade from Ubuntu 22.04 to 26.04 using do-release-upgrade you can only do an in place upgrade to the next major version. so if you do that you will be installing a fresh version so make some notes now so when the time comes you are aware of every bit of customization you have made to the server.
note this should be an on going process between now and when you get around to the upgrade.
I see you got a few responses, but what (I think) is missing from the discussion, is the fact that a lot of packages are controlled by the distribution. The real question is whether or not you need the latest versions of MySQL and/or PHP and whether or not Ubuntu 22.04 LTS will continue to update them for you.
Usually when I want to update the PHP version without using a PPA. Otherwise, before the LTS standard security maintenance ends but once Virtualmin supports the latest LTS build. I tend to migrate instead of in-place upgrade.
The downtime will be way less than a distro upgrade, which can take 5-10 minutes even on powerful bare metal servers, not to mention slower cloud instancesâwith two instances running at the same time, thereâs no downtime at all.
And the night time updates were because we had customers that would literally call if we had to reboot a server because they noticed it was âdownâ.