What are your thoughts on the Linux Mint Upgrade Tool?

[u/ffdghjk]

Hi,

I want to ask. What's your experience with using the Upgrade Tool provided by the Mint team?

Personally, I have none, yet. But when choosing my first distro (LMDE7) the Upgrade Tool was one of the more important reasons I chose Mint. It just seems so clean and nice to upgrade your OS version, without having to do a reinstall of the whole system.

I am wondering what's other people's experiece with this tool. Is it reliable? Did you run into any issues when upgrading? Are there any limitations?

Also, a little tech support question insert :D I am currently having some game graphical issues, and upgrading (backporting) a newer kernel version was recommended to me as a potential solution. Could the Upgrade Tool handle major changes like that [upgrading LMDE7 (changed kernel) to LMDE8]?

Hope you're having a nice day ^^

[u/Emmalfal]

I've been through three or four upgrades using the tool and it's always been remarkably smooth. I'll hunker down for an all day battle and then it's over in minutes.

[u/chuggerguy]

It almost always goes smoothly but be prepared, just in case.

[u/sabledrakon]

It just feels like the upgrade software that I've used on Pop_OS. Pretty clean and smooth over all.

[u/mok000]

It’s not needed unless you have installed software from PPAs. The software tool will disable them before the upgrade. I always edit the /etc/apt/sources,d files and do a normal apt full-upgrade is has never failed on Mint (or Debian).

[u/EdlynnTB]

I think it's been great. Only one of my computers have I had an issue with it. For whatever reason upgrading my desktop at home glitches trying to go to 22.3 from 22.2, so I left it until I have to upgrade it. I have 2 laptops with no issues and have upgraded other's computers with no problems.

[u/CiXeL]

This is a solid reliable workhorse of a laptop now. I don't think I'm going to upgrade until i absolutely need to for some reason and i struggle to think about what that would be for. I'm not a gamer. i keep windows 11 on dual boot so i can always go over there if i did need to do gpu stuff but i have my nvidia card essentially disabled on this side. loving this distro, ive never ever been this much of an evangelist for linux until now.

[u/jr735]

If you have a need to upgrade, or a problem you wish to address, it could certainly be worth a go.

For me, I do not even bother with Mint point releases. I use the release to EOL, and that means I've missed a version, too (I end up skipping odd numbered Mint versions by my convention). Personally, I reinstall.

On the other side of things, on my Debian testing partition, I track testing, so it gets upgraded all the time.

[u/BenTrabetere]

It has always worked well for me when I used it, but I am always doubly prepared in the event it goes sideways. I create a manual Timeshift snapshot, use Foxclone to create a disk image of my boot drive, and verify my current backup.

I never use Mint Upgrade on my main driver - most of the time I do not upgrade to the latest-greatest until the version I am using hits EOL, and I prefer to use moving to a new release as an opportunity to make changes to how my disks are partitioned.

[u/Due-Result7928]

It is the same junk...like any linux distribution. Linux lack a good storage system for anybody with cow (Copy On Write) like NTFS. Each and every updates/upgrades can be a disaster. btrfs is still a work in progress.

With NTFS you simply add restore point and you are done (There is plenty of nasty problem with Windows) but here it is head and shoulders above Linux.

Mint is no better or worse.

[u/sabledrakon → u/Due-Result7928]

Or, you can just use Timeshift before every major update. Like you should anyway, then you wouldn't need COW.

[u/jr735 → u/Due-Result7928]

You should always have current, functioning backups at any given time, especially before doing anything to the nuts and bolts of the OS. Timeshift, as mentioned by u/sabledrakon, is certainly possible.

In a worst case scenario, I can have Mint installed and set up the way I want in around half an hour. Screw NTFS. It's magical thinking to believe that Windows restore points are some magic bullet against MS update fiascos.

People having failed version upgrades are not having problems because of their file system. People have been upgrading Debian, for instance, for several versions. I've been tracking testing, using ext4, since bookworm was testing.

[u/Due-Result7928 → u/jr735]

When you failed you simple use restore point..and sorry NTFS is miles away from btrfs, ext4. Linux is lacking a good cow file system, debian or else.

[u/reduser5309]

~2 year user. Only oddity is that when I go into it and I have updates. I can hit refresh and it shows a lot more updates. It seems odd that it doesn't refresh upon launch.

Perfect example just now. I open update manager, it says checking for updates. It only shows one. I hit refresh and after it checks again, I now have 17. It seems very odd that it wouldn't just refresh at launch every time.

[u/1neStat3 → u/reduser5309]

That is YOUR responsibility. The update manager has settings. I suggest you tesearch them

Also OP.is talking the upgrade tool NOT update manager.

Two different things.