Mint 18 question

[#1]

The advice appears to be that a fresh install is the way to go but details about how to upgrade from 17.3 will be out later this month.

If I install 18 what happens to the existing dual boot system with 17.3 and windows 7, will the installation see these existing os and allow me to install it without affecting them or am I asking for problems.

The problem is I have a lot of programs on windows and simply do not want to reinstall them all again, I never use windows online so an option to store stuff on the, 'cloud' is a non starter.

Or am I just better waiting for the upgrade ?

Under the above circumstances what would you do ?

[#2]

Personally in your situation I wait for the update to come.

You can install another copy in a different partition if you have room, that is how I try out other distro's or beta releases.

How did you install your Mint? Do you have a separate /home partition or is it on the one? If it is on a separate one you can use the backup tool to backup what you have installed (in Mint) and do a clean install (leaving the /home UNFORMATTED but mounted as /home) then use the backup tool to restore your apps.

[#3]

Thanks for that, as you say the best advice in my case is to wait for the update.

[#4]

By all means take a backup first!

You could try out Mint 18 using a DVD/USB, or for a more testing time you could install Mint 18 in a VM on a Mint 17.3 installation (or any other Linux machine).

[#5]

VileReynard wrote:

...or for a more testing time you could install Mint 18 in a VM on a Mint 17.3 installation (or any other Linux machine).

Or install Mint 18 in a VM in Windows 7. I have done so with VirtualBox.

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[#6]

How to upgrade to Linux Mint 18

[#7]

I tried the upgrade in a VM (although the notes don't actually say you can do this).

It gave hundreds of errors/warnings, which I ignored and eventually ended up with a functioning(?) Mint 18 in the VM.

Note that you will have to deal with systemd if you upgrade and stylistically the upgraded version doesn't look much different. I probably won't bother.

My main machine uses LMDE - which is a semi-rolling upgrade of a Mint-like system (but based on Debian).

[#8]

Since it is a major upgrade it isn't as simple as just changing the repo's.
I was going to try this on my server install, but due to having issues with services not starting, I just blew the system away and installed a fresh one, then reinstalled my apps & services.

Systemd isn't that much of a bane for normal users, unless you install services manually you will not know it is there.
You have 3 choices really.
1. leave it alone it is working
2. run the upgrade script and see if you will have any problems, then upgrade round them
3. backup your apps (use mint backup and to just backup the names), copy your /etc/apt folder if you have any ppa's installed, your /etc/fstab if you have any special mounts etc. Then as long as you have a seperate /home partition blow the old system away in a manual upgrade, mount /home as /ext4 and NO FORMAT, and then run the backup and re-install your apps. Similarly check the apt/sources.d folder for any ppa'a and re-add them.

[#9]

The script has a "check run" option where all error messages are output - but it doesn't actually do anything to your installation.

The idea is that you can uninstall anything causing bad things, do the upgrade and reinstall these packages after the upgrade.

[#10]

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@HairyMcbiker wrote:
Since it is a major upgrade it isn't as simple as just changing the repo's.

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That's one thing I miss vs opensuse - just change the repos and "zypper dup"; job done. opensuse package management is generally more user friendly (and faster), IMHO.

Phil

[#11]

Suse just plain refused to run for me. From usb or dvd. Something about the video driver, even trying vanilla just wouldn't boot to a screen. So haven't run it for many years.
I started using Mandriva way back in the old days, then when I moved to Linux full time I went to Ubuntu then Mint. Not found a reason to move yet.

[#12]

The downside to Mint is that until now, it has never had an upgrade in place feature.

If you have 2,500 packages installed you can be certain that a substantial number will have been deleted/renamed/added between 17.3 and 18 (and that's not even counting all the systemd [-Censored-]).

BTW Mint in a VM (for me) has always insisted on using a software based video "driver".

[#13]

In a vm you will always use a software driver. Since you are working through a software sub layer not directly with the hardware.

As to # of packages installed, most of the packages a user has installed vs the total # of packages installed is quite small. The upgrade app should know if app abc is now called xyz if it is a system app.

Personally I only install about two dozen actual apps over the base install. (on this pc) Vs about 10 on my server.
Most are installed via ppa's and are easy to re-install, the few that require manually installing I usually install to my ~/bin folder. That way they survive a re-install. The exception is Calibre which I have a script for to upgrade/install manually. (again in my ~/bin folder).

I find if you keep the ppa list separate or backup the /etc/apt folder then it is easy to re-install them,
It is usual that after a month of so I will look for a particular app I have forgotten about, and use seldom, then have to re-install it, but that takes seconds. (Sigil was an instance recently, I find the editor in Calibre (based on Sigil) is ok most of the time but I occasionally need the extra power)


I tried LMDE but some of my apps just either wouldn't run or needed too many hacks to get them to last time I tried it (about 3 years ago)

[#14]

Never had any problems with LMDE with the exception of Flash upgrades, which tended to be a couple of weeks later.

Also never hacked any applications, although the available ones are not the bleeding edge versions.

It's easy to add hundreds of additional packages if you install even a partial texlive

Isn't a ~/bin folder a tiny bit unusual?

What's wrong with /local/bin - which you only have a single one of.

[#15]

~/bin is not unusual, it is actually in YOUR bash path settings.
/local/bin doesn't exist for me. And I only have one ~/bin 😉

If I add things to ~/bin then they are writeable by me without any sudo'ing and are easy to correct and use. Flash I don't have installed ".".

My server runs my torrents, sabnzbd, couchpotato, nfs shares, sonar, etc etc. Last time I tried LMDE I couldn't get some of them to work and the hassle wasn't worth the effort of not upgrading every year or so. As it is it autoupdates most of them and runs 24/7/365. I ssh in every week to run an apt update/upgrade to keep it upto date.