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I am currently using Ubuntu 12.10 i386.

I was disappointed when I was unable to install any software, get updates, or upgrade.

In another question here, I was told to install Ubuntu 14.04. And I am currently downloading the Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 via Transmission.

I've used Windows for a long time and I know I can't upgrade from 32 bit to 64 bit.

The Ubuntu installation that I use now is 32 bit 12.10, so can I upgrade directly to Ubuntu 14.04 from 12.10 or do I have to clean install it?

If i can upgrade without losing files, can someone please tell me how?

RPiAwesomeness
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Anfas
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2 Answers2

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You have to do a clean install for two reasons:

  1. As you have noted, 32-bit cannot be upgraded to 64-bit.
  2. Ubuntu releases can be upgraded in two ways: from any release to the immediate next release, or from one LTS release to another. You can't jump from a normal release to an LTS release which came a couple of versions later.

If you have the free space, create a new partition and install. If you don't have the free space, you have two options - do a step-by-step upgradation of 12.10 to 14.04 - from 12.10 to 13.04, from 13.04 to 13.10 and 13.10 to 14.04. This can be done - the question is, is the time and effort worth it? On last way would be avoid formatting the partition when you are installing 14.04, which may let you save your home directory and a few other things.

muru
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Quick Warning: I can't promise you that this will work, but this is how you are suppose to do it. Always make sure you backup before you do a fresh install just incase you lose your data.

The best thing to do is do a clean install. If you don't want to lose your data, this can be easily solved during the install stage when it asks you what installation type you want to carry out (found in step 4 here).

Simply pick something else from the list, and click Continue.

On the next screen, you'll be presented with something like this:

Installation type gparted menu screen

From your description you should only have one partition, so select that one and then click the Change button.

Change the Use as: option to be the same type as your partition. So in my example this is ext4. And select the mount point to be /. Make sure the Format the partition: option is not ticked - this is how you will protect your /home directories/files/settings. You should have something like this:

enter image description here

Click OK and then click Install Now. Then follow the rest of the install steps as usual.

hazrpg
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