Upgrading to 16.04 can render the system permanently broken

[Alberto Salvia Novella]

Teo Teo:
> I mean, when my computer tells me that there is an upgrade available, it's
> because it has asked some server, right? Even if it had already stored the
> response, it still has to download the upgrade from somewhere. So, I don't
> see the difficulty...

In fact right now the Software Updater will only ask you to upgrade if 
you have enabled it to do so to any new Ubuntu release, but not if you 
have chosen to do only for long support ones. So the malicious upgrade 
is not affecting novel users or large deployments.

And if you have already upgraded to Xenial and found this bug, you can 
repair it by reinstalling the release using a live disk. It sucks a 
little bit, but is still fast and easy for most people.

Apart from that I cannot figure out a way we could prevent that error 
from happening at present. We just require a few more people testing the 
operating system before release, so it is just a matter of good work and 
patience till Ubuntu is popular enough to have some more testers.