Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 with a side project of the week. Let’s get started!
Linux Mint is known for being one of the easiest distributions to use when switching from Windows, so that’s why I chose it when I assembled a desktop for my father. The only catch –or so I heard– was that you’re basically stuck reinstalling every time you need to upgrade. Or are you?
Clues here and there hint otherwise. Long story short, I found a few guides. The gist of them is generally to update/upgrade packages, backup, then system upgrade. The Mint 18.x repositories are shut down, but the underlying Ubuntu ones still work. I went on to backup the home directory, then use a recommended utility called Timeshift to create another time-consuming backup.
I tried following one to upgrade to Mint 20, but 18.3 insisted on Mint 19 and 19 on 19.3. The jump to 20 was a lot longer, requiring the sudo password multiple times along the way. A couple days later, after things were starting to settle, I spotted Mint 20.3, and struggled upgrading to that trying to follow the same principals as before. Turns out there are multiple ways to upgrade, and not all of them work for each upgrade. The Linux Mint User Guide has a page linking to blog posts about each step in the upgrade path from Mint 17 to present [1].
Takeaway
I doubt I would trust someone who only knows how to update/upgrade/install packages unless he was up to failure/frustration/learning cycles. On the other hand, that is why using a utility like Timeshift is important.
My recommendation for Mint users who haven’t learned the command line is to back up their home directory and restore it after a clean install.
Final Question
Do you schedule backups for your computer systems?
I look forward hearing your answers on in the comments below or on my Discord server.
Work Cited
[1] Linux Mint Revision 52875d62, “Docs >> Upgrades,” The Linux Mint User Guide, 2020, [Online]. Available: https://linuxmint-user-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/upgrade.html. [Accessed June 19, 2022].