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LINUX: It's official - Mint 17 "Qiana" released to distribution

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tosim:
Been using Mint-MATE since version12. Made a clean install when 13 came out and was running that until 17 came ou. I have quite a few computers and dual-boot all of them with Linux17-MATE, and Win 7. I only get into Win 7 a few times a year, as I've decided that for over 95% of my computing, Mint is great.

Deozaan:
Is there any way to upgrade an older installation to the latest version? I have a working Mint 15 install. Instead of starting it all over from scratch, it would be nice if I could tell it to upgrade itself. I went into the Update Manager and updated everything, but it still says it is running Mint 15.
-Deozaan (June 30, 2014, 04:21 PM)
--- End quote ---

You can...but it's not recommended. Especially if you have a bunch of PPAs added to your repositories. Many of those are version specific so you'd need to remove and install the correct ones for the version of Ubu underneath Mint.

And even though Ubuntu has a do-release-upgrade command, you'll need to manually update your software sources list first for it to work.

I've done upgrades that way (in the past) and I learned they made for far more work than they saved. About the only time I've found Debian's apt-get dist-upgrade or Ubuntu's do-release-upgrade really useful was for upgrading servers. Desktops just have too much "other stuff" loaded for either upgrade command to work reliably.

Recommendation: Don't. Just do a clean install. You'll save more time in the long run.-40hz (June 30, 2014, 05:26 PM)
--- End quote ---

Does anyone know if this has changed now that Mint has changed its upgrade path? That is, if I install some version of Mint 17, should I then be able to update to Mint 17.x without having to do a clean install?

40hz:
Is there any way to upgrade an older installation to the latest version? I have a working Mint 15 install. Instead of starting it all over from scratch, it would be nice if I could tell it to upgrade itself. I went into the Update Manager and updated everything, but it still says it is running Mint 15.
-Deozaan (June 30, 2014, 04:21 PM)
--- End quote ---

You can...but it's not recommended. Especially if you have a bunch of PPAs added to your repositories. Many of those are version specific so you'd need to remove and install the correct ones for the version of Ubu underneath Mint.

And even though Ubuntu has a do-release-upgrade command, you'll need to manually update your software sources list first for it to work.

I've done upgrades that way (in the past) and I learned they made for far more work than they saved. About the only time I've found Debian's apt-get dist-upgrade or Ubuntu's do-release-upgrade really useful was for upgrading servers. Desktops just have too much "other stuff" loaded for either upgrade command to work reliably.

Recommendation: Don't. Just do a clean install. You'll save more time in the long run.-40hz (June 30, 2014, 05:26 PM)
--- End quote ---

Does anyone know if this has changed now that Mint has changed its upgrade path? That is, if I install some version of Mint 17, should I then be able to update to Mint 17.x without having to do a clean install?
-Deozaan (October 27, 2014, 12:35 PM)
--- End quote ---

Yes. You can.

I made an error in my original reply (since corrected) because I got sloppy about the difference between a release upgrade and a version or 'dist' upgrade. (It's a common error for which I apologise.  :-[)

Within the same major version, apt-get dist-upgrade is fine and probably a good idea to run since dist-upgrade will also attempt to intelligently upgrade any dependencies along with the installed packages plus resolve any dependency conflicts that may result. The regular update only updates the installed packages themselves. It will not update, add, or remove anything else - including any new dependencies or unneeded packages. Additionally, any update that would change the status of another installed package won't get downloaded or installed using just apt-get update.

To clarify - a "dist upgrade" is not the same thing as a "release upgrade." "dist-upgrade" works within the same release since it uses the same repositories as a regular update.

 :Thmbsup:

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