I have a simple question: I installed Lubuntu 23.04; I set up everything and installed many packages, I just want to ask: I read that 23.04 will be supported until January 2024; when will be out the new release and I will update/upgrade, will all my packages remains installed or I will have to reinstall them again? As well: I disabled some systemd services and timers; will the remain disabled?
Kind regards
Addendum: I forget to ask: will also the personal setting in my home directory will be preserved or I will have to do a backup?
The release-upgrade process will not lose you setup, configs, or manually installed packages; we perform Quality Assurance testing of that process & report all findings we have (checklist can be seen here, and if we consider any findings are of benefit to end-users, we include them in the release notes.
Thus when you decide the time is right to release-upgrade to Lubuntu 23.10 (mantic) you should backup your data, then perform upgrade after reading the release notes & our upgrade instructions (I’d also recommend reading the Ubuntu 23.10 release notes too, as they can contain specific hardware details that apply to main Ubuntu & all flavors such as us).
eg. If you read https://lubuntu.me/jammy-released/ you’ll note we had specific instructions in the section titled “Notice about upgrading from Lubuntu 20.04 LTS with LXQt:”, thus it’s always good policy to read the release notes before upgrading. This applies to all Ubuntu products, in fact to most non-Ubuntu products as well.
As for backups, chances are you won’t need them, however you should always assume you will - so create good backups.
Also FYI: You can also re-install a Lubuntu system non-destructively, it’s a testcase we check for somewhat regularly; eg. read Testing Checklist - understanding the testcases where it’s called “Install using existing partition”; ie. I have a jammy or 22.04 system here I don’t perform normal apt full-upgrade on, but re-install it ~weekly as a QA testcase, then reboot it & start my normal music playlist using my non-standard music player (ie. ensuring my ‘manually installed’ packages or music-player in this example were re-installed) & my datafiles (mp3s here) were not lost. With my music playing on the freshly installed system I check my system to be ~unchanged post-install, except for metadata & packages (it’ll have a newly installed Lubuntu/Ubuntu binaries etc) but my datafiles are untouched, my configs remain etc. Do note: Any system/global changes I’d made that were stored in system directories (which are erased prior to re-install) I’d expect lost during this type of re-install; but all changes made on a user-level (ie. saved in user directory) I expect to survive. I’ve giving this only as information. If I have problems on a release-upgrade & decide I don’t have time to fix them… this re-install process is one of my backup strategies.
Also note: Our Quality Assurance testing involves only Ubuntu repository software, ie. no 3rd party… Some third party is packaged to work on release-upgrades, alas some is not; thus it’s not supported by Ubuntu/Lubuntu.
FYI: My primary PC was an artful install (ie. 17.10) & I performed six-monthly release-upgrades from 2017 until into 2022 or kinetic (22.10) with few issues… (the only major issue being the LXDE to LXQt change - we said to re-install for a reason!) until eventually that system’s power supply died & I decided I need to replace that box… I expect the same on my replacement PC which was an lunar install (23.04) and has already bumped once now being on mantic (FYI: this new box is running many of my older boxes configs; though I started fresh with LXQt configs instead of the LXDE->LXQt mess my last box had)
So, to summarize: everything that I changed in the system (not in home) (eg, disabled and new services - which Imade - in /etc/systemd/system/) will be preserved? Also Autologin will remains?
If your system uses only Ubuntu repository software, yep.
It’ll also be true for a large majority of 3rd party packages too, but there are always some which can cause problems with the release-upgrade process, as the packager doesn’t consider what is required for release-upgrade, being intent only on providing the latest possible package (thus requiring you re-install). These types of packages should be removed prior to release-upgrade. That’s one benefit of the snap package format; they don’t change during the release-upgrade process as aren’t impacted.
During release-upgrade, if there are changes to the systemd or other system processes/configs, you’ll be asked what you want to do during the upgrade process… ie. you can opt to use the newer version (your changes will get lost) which will ensure a correct upgraded login, keep your older version (problems can occur here), even look at the differences between configs before you choose etc. The person performing the release-upgrade and how they answer questions will impact these types of results.
FYI: These questions give you/me the chance to know what issues we can look for on our newly upgraded system… and what we may want to edit to make it perfect for our usage… The goal of these is to give us some control & give us the maximum chance of an upgraded system working (ie. it’ll detect a changed file & you’re warned etc… it doesn’t overwrite automatically, nor not-upgrade those before asking us where our changes are detected!)