How to upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS from 11.10?

With the release of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, many users have started upgrading to the latest iteration of Ubuntu. Upgrading can be a tricky business, especially if you are upgrading from derivative operating systems like Linux Mint, PinguyOS and other similar Ubuntu based OS. Before you upgrade make sure to do a full backup of your important data on to an external device (USB stick, external hard drive or CD/DVD).
Once the backup is done, you need to make sure you have one particular package installed. That is ubuntu-desktop. To install or to check if the package is already installed go to Synaptic Package Manager or Ubuntu Software Centre, search for ubuntu-desktop and click install if the package is not installed. Terminal users type: 

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
Once installed, press Alt+F2 and type update-manager -c.

Click the Upgrade button to install the new 12.04 LTS release

The installation will take some time, two hours to four hours depending upon the amount of software is installed on your system. The installer will ask you to overwrite existing configuration files.

You can click Keep to continue with the existing configuration. This will make sure your customisations will remain intact. However, if you want a clean config, you should click Replace. Once done with the upgrade, you can check your version of Ubuntu by typing cat /etc/lsb-release at the terminal . 
:~$ cat /etc/lsb-release

DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=12.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=precise
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION=”Ubuntu 12.04 LTS”

You can also check your Ubuntu version from System Settings -> Details

However, before you restart, make sure that your grub is properly installed. Try updating your grub from the terminal using the command sudo upgdate-grub. I recommend this step because, if anything goes wrong with your upgrade, you would atleast be able to boot into the recovery mode.
:~$sudo update-grub

[sudo] password : 
Generating grub.cfg …
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-24-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-24-generic
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-23-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-23-generic
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
Found Windows 7 (loader) on /dev/sda1
done
Once the grub update is done, restart your system to get the brand new Ubuntu 12.04 LTS installation.

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