Do you want to upgrade Ubuntu Noble Numbat from 24.04 to 24.04.1 or later? If so, then that means you are looking for how to upgrade Ubuntu system to a point release. The term "Point Release" to Ubuntu users is more or less similar to "Service Pack" known to Microsoft Windows users which is a whole system upgrade (bug fixes and improvements) within current release major version. That means, in this concept, to us Ubuntu 24.04.3 (Point Three) is more or less similar to Windows XP SP3. This tutorial will explain the procedures with an example of upgrading Ubuntu Noble from fresh install to Point Three.

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Preparations 

1. Make sure you have enough time and free disk space.

You will need to attend in front of your screen for about 2 hours (time needed depends on your system). To check up your disk space, run Terminal from Ubuntu menu and type this command line:

$ df -h /

If you have 10GB or more free disk space (in our test, we have more than 15GB), you are ready to upgrade. Beware of running out of disk space because you might break your system if you do. 

2. Make sure you have a good internet access (good speed, good data allowance, good stability).

For example, we use a broadband 5MB/s unlimited internet access at home (MyRepublic ISP, Indonesia) to do this upgrade process and we did it successfully. 

3. Make sure you have a stable electricity.  

You will not want the upgrade process to abort in the middle (that might leads to breaking your system). 

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How To Upgrade

All command lines are done using Terminal application you can run from Ubuntu menu.

1. Do the first command: 

$ sudo apt-get update

Explanation: this command line will refresh Ubuntu to know the latest changes available in the Ubuntu repository to make the system ready to upgrade. 

2. Do the second command:

$ sudo apt-get upgrade

Explanation: this command line will actually do the upgrade process. That means, downloading latest version of every single package of thousands of packages installed on your Ubuntu version and installing them one by one in a correct and orderly way replacing the old ones. In our test, this took 1000MB (1GB) of software packages and 100MB disk space. 

3. Do the third command:

$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade 

Explanation: this command line will do the same with the second command. The difference is, the second command does nothing except installing (adding) packages while this third command will also remove (deleting) packages when needed i.e. it is an automatic package conflicts solver. In our test, this took about 260MB of download size and 400MB of disk space. 

4. If prompted to reboot, accept it by clicking Restart Now. Your computer will reboot.

5. Login to Ubuntu and check current system point release. Upgrading finished successfully. Done. 

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Important Information

1. You might need to repeat an upgrade command several times (when somehow an error occurred) as we did. This is fine.

2. You can use -V option (as we always do) in both upgrade commands to show in details every single one of packages being upgraded from what version to what version.

3. You can use $ sudo apt-get clean to empty the APT cache directory to free some disk space.

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References

1. Ubuntu 24.04 Noble Numbat Release Notes 

2. Repositories

3. SoftwareManagement

4. Repositories/Ubuntu

5. Upgrades

6. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

7. Repositories/CommandLine

8. EOLUpgrades 

9. AptGet/CommandLinePackageManagement 

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