[Hudlug] updating a version of ubuntu

[michael weaver]

i now have my new laptop working with ubuntu after the tec person 
at the place where i do voluntary work for altered the cd rom in 
the bios settings for me.
i am told that when i upgrde from one version of ubuntu to 
another i dont need to do a fresh install.
however i can't seem to be able to upgrade one version of ubuntu 
desktop to another via the command line.
i have had a look at the update manager which is less accessible 
when it comes to upgrading.
it seems to work with updates but for some reason my upgrades via 
update manager don't appear to start or it doesn't do it properly 
for for some reason.
i have tried the alt f2 update-manager dash d command and i get 
told there is an upgrade, i press the upgrade button with enter 
or space, i am then asked for my password which i type and i 
enter or space on the ok button but i am wondering if there is 
another upgrade button which i cannot locate with orca which i 
need to hit to actually get my upgrade like it is asking "are you 
sure you are sure you want to carry out the upgrade" which it 
doesn't appear to do when you do an update because all you do is 
if it shows check boxes for the updates when it enters update 
manager you just hit the install, maybe type your password and ok 
it and away it goes.
if i remember correctly when i tried looking at the update 
manager in vox bar and accepted my upgrade, ben appeared to 
suggest that the upgrade hadn't started and that he told me to do 
a tab or a few tabs to get to a button which orca doesn't read 
marked upgrade to actually start it which is why i am having a 
problem with doing it without having a pair of eyes handy.
someone suggested i type sudo do-release-upgrade from the 
terminal and it was like it was trying to do an upgrade, i was 
asked if i wanted to install the upgrades although i got some 
error message about mirrors something like "unable to use default 
mirror" or something along that line before i was asked if i 
wanted to do the upgrade and that i was told it would take 6 
hours to do it, i pressed y to accept and enter and it started 
the upgrade or so i thought and then part way through i lost 
speech altogether, after leaving the system for the recommended 6 
hours i had no speech and had to switch off the laptop so i don't 
think it installed properly if it was doing the upgrade as ctrl 
alt delete wouldn't work.
that is the furthest i have ever got with ano upgrade.
my guess is the problem was that i was downloading the server 
version instead of the desktop version but i can't be sure.
i am not even sure if there should have been a message warning me 
about reading the mirror which it came up with when checking 
against my version so i still don't know how i know when i have 
been successful so it looks like me having to do a clean install 
every time i decide to get a newer version of ubuntu.