Change the edition of a SQL Server on Linux instance

In this post I cover the steps required to change (downgrade or upgrade) the edition of a SQL Server instance running on Linux.

In my previous post I’ve went through the steps of installing SQL Server 2025 on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.
While the process is pretty straight-forward, there might be cases where someone can accidentally specify the wrong edition and only notice afterwards.

Luckily, the edition can be changed with just a few commands.

Prerequisites

The user doing these steps needs sufficient permissions on the following commands and binaries:

• systemctl (stop/start/status) for the mssql-server service
• /opt/mssql/bin/mssql-conf

For the mssql-conf tool your user should either be a member of the mssql group (here’s an example with my user):

Or you should have sudo permissions.

How to

First, let’s take a look at the “before” state.

At this point, the configured edition is Enterprise Evaluation.
This is basically Enterprise Edition with the caveat that it cannot be used for production stuff, and it has a 180 days lifespan.

To change the edition of SQL Server on Linux, the mssql-server service will first have to be stopped.

Once the service is stopped, I proceed to the next step.

Here, I’m prompted for the edition I want to switch to.
I tap 2 for Enterprise Developer Edition and press Enter to proceed.

After the edition change completes, I start the mssql-server service back up.

And I check what the edition that’s now being used by this SQL Server on Linux instance.

Looks like the edition change was a success and the instance is now running Enterprise Developer Edition.

Conclusion

Don’t worry if you’ve picked the wrong edition during the initial setup process.
Changing the edition of SQL Server on Linux is fairly easy and it does not mess with your existing user databases, logins, and configurations.

If you’ve found this useful, you might also want to check out my post about resetting the sa password for SQL Server on Linux.