Upgrading from #Ubuntu 20.04 to 22.04 using do-release-upgrade - it says at the end "167 packages are going to be removed." Fair enough. Then "Removing the packages can take several hours."
[I don't believe you dot gif]
Perhaps if you've got one very under-clocked core on an 386?
@popey Did an inplace 20.04-22.04 upgrade on a Pi 3b+ - for that at least the "hours" timescale is accurate.