2 Posts
0
6057
Ubuntu Upgrades to Latest Release
I am the fresh owner of a Dell XPS 13 9310 Developer Editions with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.
This is honestly the most amazing machine I've ever owned. My only questions are:
1. Can you upgrade to Ubuntu 21.04? It doesn't seem to want to let me using the normal cli procedures.
2. Does Dell not want you to use anything other than LTS on this machine? If I could get this confirmed I will stop trying to upgrade.
With that said, the next LTS isn't out until 22.04. I'd kinda like to "stay current".
Thanks
lgs11
4 Posts
0
July 15th, 2021 10:00
Upgrading from Dell's version is not easy, and causes the system to end up in an undefined state. See this thread:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1341834/partially-successful-upgrade-from-20-04-to-20-10/1350318
This happened to me also. I changed the setting in Software Updater to allow non-LTS releases, and then ran the upgrade from 20.04 Focal to 20.10 Groovy. The upgrade seemed to finish fine, but the system still thought it was in 20.04 and wouldn't let me continue to upgrade to 21.04.
I decided to cheat and modified /etc/os-release so that I could update to 21.04 Hirsute. Same again, it finished but thinks I'm still in Groovy, so I will need to consider doing the same trick again next time.
I do not recommend doing this unless you know exactly what's going on. You need to make a full backup first, and be prepared to revert to Dell's recovery (using Grub, not Dell Recovery) if something goes wrong. Also make sure to disable dell-linux-assistant, etc.
dnendel
2 Posts
0
July 26th, 2021 06:00
Thank you. A Dell tech reached out to me and provided pretty much the same info. I will be using nothing but LTS on this laptop. Change in habits for me, but I'll adapt.
Loving this amazing machine. Dell knocked it out of the park with this one.
cenkt
5 Posts
0
December 12th, 2021 08:00
Hey there, did you ended up giving it a try via fresh install?
cenkt
5 Posts
0
December 13th, 2021 03:00
I would expect, someone who knows what he is doing might add the correct repos etc. to a fresh install but I'm not sure as you are. If I'm recalling correctly when I updated inside the OS as you did, the built in repos from Dell were still the repos for focal 20.04 and so not functioning. But this was a while ago, so I won't blame my memory if its wrong.
Your setup has no driver or battery issues?
Relevant: https://www.dell.com/community/Linux-General/Ubuntu-Desktop-20-04-LTS/td-p/7562171
lgs11
4 Posts
0
December 13th, 2021 03:00
I continued with my workaround and upgraded to 21.10 Impish. It seems to be fine.
I'm still getting firmware updates from Dell, which I'm not sure would happen with a regular fresh install. Does anyone know?
cenkt
5 Posts
0
December 13th, 2021 03:00
Thanks for the reply,
That actually sounds pretty good. Since the trouble I had was more jumpy-erratic track-pad, and horrible battery life and so on. Some stuff that is impossible to miss. But as I'm thinking more on the issue, these were on my trial with fresh install rather than in-OS upgrade.
My Wi-fi behaves weird sometimes as well. (On the Dell-supported official install, mind you) Got disconnected after waking etc. I had the recent Bios update done just for that, and since that (couple of days so not so sure yet) it did not repeat.
Maybe I will give your method a try later.
If you don't mind, can you share somehow the dell repos from your apt sources list? A screenshot from the Software & Updates would even suffice.
Have a nice week
lgs11
4 Posts
0
December 13th, 2021 03:00
It works well for me, but I haven't done any extensive testing outside of the functionality I need. I have a Dell U2417H monitor, Logitech mouse with dongle, a bt keyboard, and an Asus AX router.
The wifi could possibly be faster (getting ~500 mbps from 3 m line-of-sight) but I haven't compared with other devices or done any troubleshooting on that.
The battery is fine.
lgs11
4 Posts
0
December 13th, 2021 04:00
I'm not sure why the 21.04 Hirsute repo is disabled and not replaced for 21.10.
I disabled the somerville repos on purpose during the first upgrade from 20.04.
cenkt
5 Posts
1
December 13th, 2021 05:00
For your reference these are mine on 20.04 factory install from Dell.