Upgrading to a no longer supported version [duplicate]

Question

As per my previous question the issue I hoped would be resolved persist. Issue is that by upgrade I get the option to upgrade to 13.10. However 12.10, which I'm currently running, ended in May of 2014 – the “supplied” version is 13.10, but this one ended in July of 2014!

What to do now? Really hoped I could, for once, do an upgrade and not, yet again, buy a new HDD for upgrade ... with the days of work that this entails :P

Should I upgrade to 13.10 and then to 14.10 or 14.04 or is this a dead end. Is it a high risk operation etc.?

Can't post image so here is an ASCII version of dialogue

[»«][                       Software Updater                      ] _X |
|                                                                      |
|  +-------+  Software updates are no longer provided for Ubuntu       |
|  |    ^  |  12.10                                                    |
|  |    #  |                                                           |
|  +-------+                                                           |
|             To stay secure, you should upgrade to Ubuntu 13.10       |
|                                                                      |
|  [ Settings... ]                    [  Upgrade...  ] [     OK     ]  |
|                                                                      |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+

After [ Upgrade... ]:

= Upgrading to a no longer supported version =

You are about to upgrade to a version of Ubuntu that is no longer
supported. 

The target release of Ubuntu is '''no longer supported''' by
Canonical. The support timeframe is between 9 month and 5 years after
the initial release. You will not receive security updates or critical
bugfixes. See http://www.ubuntu.com/releaseendoflife for details.

It is still possible to upgrade this version and eventually you will
be able to upgrade to a supported release of Ubuntu.

Alternatively you may want to consider to reinstall the machine to the
latest version, for more information on this, visit:
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu

For pre-installed system you may want to contact the manufacturer
for instructions.

== Feedback and Helping ==

If you would like to help shape Ubuntu, take a look at the list of 
ways you can participate at

  http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate/

Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions will help ensure
that our next release is the best release of Ubuntu ever.  If you feel
that you have found a bug please read:

  http://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

Then report bugs using apport in Ubuntu.  For example:

  ubuntu-bug linux

will open a bug report in Launchpad regarding the linux package.

If you have a question, or if you think you may have found a bug but 
aren't sure, first try asking on the #ubuntu or #ubuntu-bugs IRC 
channels on Freenode, on the Ubuntu Users mailing list, or on the 
Ubuntu forums:

  http://help.ubuntu.com/community/InternetRelayChat
  http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users
  http://www.ubuntuforums.org/


== More Information ==

You can find out more about Ubuntu on our website, IRC channel and wiki.
If you're new to Ubuntu, please visit:

  http://www.ubuntu.com/


To sign up for future Ubuntu announcements, please subscribe to Ubuntu's 
very low volume announcement list at:

  http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-announce

Answer 1

For this particular case, the only quick, easy, less prone for upgrading issues, use less bandwidth and with support from the community and new updates is to do a backup of the files you need and then proceed on installing Ubuntu 14.04.1 from the LiveDVD or LiveUSB, removing everything you had before.

You will have your files backed up and will have a less time and with less issues the latest 14.04.1.

It would be a huge waste of effort to change the sources.list files to point to the old ones and start upgrading from 12.10 to a newer supported version. So your best secure and simple way is to install 14.04.1 directly from the Live medium and do the backup of any important files you need.

If you have created a /home partition, even better, simply tell the 14.04.1 installation that you will use the /home partition already existing as your /home for the 14.04.1 install. You can do this by selecting the Manual or Advanced way when it prompts for what to do with the existing Ubuntu installation (The window that says overwrite, remove old ubuntu and install new, etc..).

Answer 2

Try changing your /etc/apt/sources.list to point to the old repositories.

Make a backup of sources:

sudo cp -v /etc/apt/sources.{list,backup}

Change sources.list

sudo sed -i 's/us.archive/old-releases/' /etc/apt/sources.list

Then run

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Then run

sudo do-release-upgrade