9

I've accidentally installed Ubuntu from a 16.10 iso image instead of 16.04 and I do not want to reinstall it via a format...

Is there a way I can downgrade from 16.10 to 16.04?

PS:

I desire to have an LTS release as to guarantee a certain stability level, would downgrading to 16.04 be a waste of time since 16.10 would allow me such stability, or switching to 16.04 is the logical thing to do?

Hamza Ouaghad
  • 203

2 Answers2

7

There is no way to downgrade. You can install 16.04 from scratch.

16.10 has not been released yet, and you can't expect stability from a development version.

Please also take in accont that questions about Ubuntu 16.10 are off-topic at this site till the end of October, when it is planned to be released.

Pilot6
  • 92,041
0

APT has a feature called pinning. If sources.list (or files in /etc/apt/sources.list.d) include repository entries for both xenial and yakkety, and file /etc/apt/preferences contains the following lines

Package: *
Pin: release a=yakkety,o=Ubuntu
Pin-Priority: -1

Package: *
Pin: release a=xenial,o=Ubuntu
Pin-Priority: 1001

apt-get dist-upgrade should try to install package versions corresponding to xenial release (i.e. downgrade all packages). If the process is interrupted, dpkg --configure --pending may help a little bit.

This is something that is not supported, and should not be done without backups and means for reinstall available. If something does work as it should after this kind of downgrade, the general advise will probably be "do a clean reinstall".

J.J. Hakala
  • 441