On 30 October 2013 10:42, Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk wrote:
On 30 October 2013 10:18, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
This explains the rationale and how-to for Mint updates http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2
It says "Each release receives bug fixes and security updates for about 18 months (or 3 years in the case of "Long Term Support" releases such as Linux Mint 5 or Linux Mint 9)".
At the time of LM5/8 this was true of Ubuntu but more recently they dropped to 9 months (ie you only have three months in which to upgrade to the next release). I assume that LM follows Ubuntu in this regard and this tutorial is out of date?
but then links to this
Actually: http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/62
which shows you how to do an in-place update. Does that change your mind? :-)
Not really, because it's beyond the capability (or interest!) of my "users".
I've upgraded mint with apt and all worked perfectly I think it was mint 10 ->11. I've also had an upgrade on Ubuntu break so bad that it was unrecoverable, and learned a valuable lesson on backing up. I expect with a sensible backup of /home all bass should be well covered with an apt upgrade if you are going to give support.
BTW, I've never tried to update mint, so I don't know what works!
When I first installed Mint I assumed (as an Ubuntu derivative) that it had an upgrade procedure. When I discovered it didn't I followed the apt update process. As far as I can remember it worked fine (I subsequently bought new hardware and installed Kubuntu - the main reason I avoided Mint was the lack of upgrade process).
Reading the reasons "against" an upgrade as described by Mint, I agree that Ubuntu skips the backup step and shouldn't, but aside from that the argument isn't really made to me. They should tweak the upgrade process to force a backup.
The ideal upgrade process for me would be:
- Download and trial new version as LiveCD
- In-place upgrade using the LiveCD as apt repository (presumably
having rebooted back into the installed version first, although it could be automated by the CD).
- Backup steps incorporated as part of the in-place upgrade.
In other words somewhere between Ubuntu and Mint...
Ahh if only life were that simple. I've got to agree with you here that would be the best strategy but it doesn't really help your problem.
Maybe the rolling upgrade enabled Mint Debian Edition with Cinnamon is worth a try.
Cheers, BJ