[ubuntu] Upgrading from unsupported release

Hi there!

Just earlier this evening, I logged into my offshore server and noticed something: it was still running Ubuntu 11.04.

I went to upgrade, but of course, all the packages 404'd, because the sources had changed. Long story short, I managed to correct the sources to the old archives, and get update-manager-core installed, so that I could run do-release-upgrade.

I noted that by using do-release-upgrade, I would need four upgrades to get to the newest version. Am I correct in thinking this? (ie, 11.04 -> 11.10, followed by 11.10 -> 12.04, then 12.04 -> 12.10, and finally 12.10 -> 13.04)

While talking to a friend at the same time as thinking whether or not to do this tonight or tomorrow morning, he said that the way he upgraded a Debian system in the past was by just changing the sources in /etc/apt/sources.list to point to the distro that he was upgrading to, followed by performing an apt-get dist-upgrade.

My question is this: Is it better to go through with the four iterations of do-release-upgrade, or should I just go through with my friend's advice with changing /etc/apt/sources.list (and if yes, is this a safe method of upgrading?)?

Thanks!