April is something of a magical month for Linux users. We get an influx of fresh new experiences to try in our favorite distros. From the myriad flavors of the Ubuntu 22.04 family to the Fedora 36 beta, there’s no shortage of early preview ISOs to download and test. But if you’re craving even more, System76 just announced that the Pop OS 22.04 beta is ready!
System76 is gradually reducing its reliance on Ubuntu, and simultaneously developing its own Rust-based desktop environment. Needless to say, Pop OS 22.04 feels like an important release.
The team is looking for two types of testing: clean installs and in-place upgrades. Fortunately, the developers have provided detailed instructions for the upgrade, but warn that it is a beta and re-installs are likely.
Here are some important notes about the upgrade path, though. If you’re currently on Pop OS 21.10, it’s a pretty straightforward upgrade path. What if you’re currently running Pop OS 20.04? Upgrading from the previous LTS release to this current one will take an extra step — namely, upgrading to version 21.10 and then to 22.04.
Since the team is looking for actionable feedback, it recommends running some commands to collection about your system’s currently installed software:
cat /etc/apt/sources.list >> sources.txt
ls -alh /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ >> sources.txt
cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/* >> sources.txt
apt list --installed > packages.txtAfter that, it’s just a matter of manually running the pop-upgrade command:
sudo pop-upgrade release upgrade -fTo get the full rundown of instructions (including troubleshooting tips), please visit the official GitHub repository.
In the meantime, here are direct links to the Pop OS 22.04 Beta downloads:
Intel/AMD Graphics ISO:
NVIDIA Graphics ISO:
Happy testing! I’m also downloading it the moment I click “publish” on this news post, so keep an eye on my Twitter for impressions!
