Author Topic: LINUX: In-place upgrade of Mint 17.0 Qiana to Mint 17.1 Rebecca (Read 32069 times)

40hz · « **on:** January 07, 2015, 04:52 PM »

I generally am not too crazy about upgrading one version of Linux (or any other operating system) to another. I'm of the old-school "clean install" mindset when it comes to that. However, since I was facing an upgrade on a heavily tweaked and customized Mint 17.0 Cinnamon installation, I decided to try Mint's official way to go from that to 17.1 since I had already resolved to do it anyway. "Nothing ventured..." and all that, right?

Well...that was two days ago. And I'm happy to report that in this instance, it all went as smooth as butterscotch with absolutely no (as in zero) bad surprises during or afterwards. The entire process took approximately 10 minutes - and everything just worked. And the upgrade procedure itself was handled entirely within Mint's own Update Manager. Now how logical is that?

To do this upgrade requires only a few simple steps.

The first step is to run the Update Manager and hit refresh to see if mintupdate itself needs updating. If it does - do it. Then hit the refresh button again to make sure it was done.

Once that's completed (if needed), go to the Edit drop-down in the menu bar and select Upgrade to Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca

That's pretty much it. After a few confirmations, Update Manager will download, install, and configure all requisite software. It will then prompt you to reboot (one of the very few times you'll ever be asked to do that in Linux btw) your machine. When it comes back up, you'll have a spankin' new 'Rebecca' machine.

Doesn't get much easier than that. Hope this is the shape of things to come for Mint's workstation upgrades going forward.

More detailed instructions (with pretty pictures) can be found here.

superboyac · « **Reply #1 on:** January 07, 2015, 05:02 PM »

Nice! IS Linux becoming set it and forget it?? Good news for the upcoming dystopian future.

40hz · « **Reply #2 on:** January 07, 2015, 05:14 PM »

Maybe not quite set & forget. Not yet anyway. But in Mint's case, this was a happy compromise between the usual "fresh" install hassle and the occasionally dicey "rolling update" approach.

Now let's see them do it three more times just so we know it's not luck.

Deozaan · « **Reply #3 on:** January 07, 2015, 05:42 PM »

I'm a bit disappointed that the upgrade is hidden in the Edit drop-down menu. But other than that, this is great news that it really does work as easily as it should.

(I'm still waiting for 17.1 Xfce)

ewemoa · « **Reply #4 on:** January 08, 2015, 03:57 AM »

Sounds nice for sure

Hoping the success continues.

40hz · « **Reply #5 on:** January 12, 2015, 07:45 AM »

(I'm still waiting for 17.1 Xfce)
-Deozaan (January 07, 2015, 05:42 PM)

The Xfce & KDE 17.1 versions are now out. And the upgrade path is the same for all (i.e. Cinnamon/KDE/MATE/Xfce) versions. Yay!

Deozaan · « **Reply #6 on:** January 13, 2015, 02:14 AM »

I'm not a fan of the upgrade process.

I did my due diligence, reading all about the update, release notes, new features, known issues, etc., before clicking that upgrade button. After doing the research, I decided I was aware of the potential risks and I didn't see anything in particular that would destroy my system, so I decided to go ahead with the upgrade.

So imagine my frustration when, after clicking upgrade, I was forced to click a link to open up the release notes in my browser before I could click the button to continue with the upgrade. "What is this? I already read this page." I closed the browser and clicked "Next" so I could upgrade to 17.1. After that I was forced to click a link to open up something else (known issues?) in my browser (which I'd already read) before I could click the button to continue with the upgrade.

Finally I was allowed to let the system install the upgrade.

But eventually I got a warning message that one of the packages failed to download, and asking me if I should cancel the upgrade or ignore the error and continue. I didn't want my system broken due to an unknown, vital package not being installed, so I cancelled the upgrade. It was only then that I was informed that the failed package was just some wallpapers.

So I tried the upgrade again. And I was forced to click the link to open up the release notes in my browser before clicking Next, and then I was forced to click the link to open up the other thing in my browser again before clicking Next. Then it started the download of the wallpapers again and they downloaded correctly and the upgrade installed and it suggested I reboot the computer to allow the changes to go into effect.

I'm glad that it works, but my experience with it was a bit frustrating and annoying, and could have been made so much easier if I wasn't forced to open my browser twice on my slow old netbook to read things I'd already read.

First world problems, eh?

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #7 on:** January 13, 2015, 04:04 AM »

Maybe not quite set & forget. Not yet anyway. But in Mint's case, this was a happy compromise between the usual "fresh" install hassle and the occasionally dicey "rolling update" approach.

Now let's see them do it three more times just so we know it's not luck.
-40hz (January 07, 2015, 05:14 PM)

Now I know this example comes from Ubuntu and not mint, but Canonical has put out *eighteen* releases since I began eyeballing them from Dapper Drake. I do NOT have anything remotely approaching the energy to do fresh installs of all that. No, not even the LTS ones that pop up every x skip-versions. Plus, at least a couple of times I ended up with severe problems trying to go to certain new versions at different points of time.

So I really hope they get in-place updating working as the goal for 2020, because that's how I believe a core OS plus updates model should work, aka a very few super-longterm cores, then update it for tons of time, until finally you just one day flip it to a new core. I don't want to flip cores less than every ten years.

I glance at the features of all these releases, and not counting Canonical's disturbing habit where some of them are unstable, I won't do an install and lose that re-tweak time just because "we fine tuned the package manager and put in new copies of about five programs that you use".

Deozaan · « **Reply #8 on:** January 13, 2015, 12:25 PM »

That's pretty much the mindset of Linux Mint. They warn you about updating, and tell you there is nothing wrong with staying at your current version if it's working for you. They say you should only upgrade if it fixes an issue you're having or provides some new functionality you need.

They'll probably update the "core" more often than every 10 years, but other than that, Mint pretty much exactly mirrors your opinion there.

40hz · « **Reply #9 on:** January 13, 2015, 01:09 PM »

The LTS versions of Linux usually run for 3-5 years rather than ten.

That doesn't mean nothing in it's core or kernal won't be changed during that period. It just means that any changes will be fully supported for the duration of the release.

My day-to-day work machines all run long-term support versions for obvious reasons.

To me, the two good reasons for going to a newer release are: (a) security patches; (b) better hardware and driver support.

In the case of Mint, I stay more current than usual because I try to stay on top of Cinnamon. Not so much because I personally like it (and I do btw!) - but because it's the easiest and most productive way for a new user to get started using Nix on the desktop.

I can hand a copy of Mint Cinnamon to anybody with even a modicum of computer experience and not worry they'll be in over their head. I've even passed Mint Cinnamon off as a beta of a 'top secret' future Windows release, and had long time Windows users tell me how neat they thought it all was. You just can't do that with every distro out there.

Josh · « **Reply #10 on:** January 13, 2015, 01:11 PM »

Is 17.1 the release where we will see KDE 5?

40hz · « **Reply #11 on:** January 13, 2015, 01:19 PM »

Is 17.1 the release where we will see KDE 5?
-Josh (January 13, 2015, 01:11 PM)

It's currently rocking 4.14. I'm guessing that won't go to version 5 in the LTS since KDE 5 is nowhere near finished last I heard. They'll probably debut it in one of the 'regular' releases long before they commit that big a change to a LTS.

From the Q&A:

Justin Says:
January 8th, 2015 at 6:32 pm

Any plans on utilizing KDE Plasma 5? in 17.2 or 18?

Edit by Clem: It’s too soon to say, it really depends on how fast it improves and how stable it gets. What I can say is that we’re keeping an eye on it and reviewing it for every cycle.

Deozaan · « **Reply #12 on:** January 13, 2015, 03:00 PM »

I posted about my complaints and got a nice response:

Edit by Clem: Hi, I understand it can be annoying but I also know for a fact many people will not actually click the link if they can just press Next, in fact many won’t even look at the page containing the link… With that said, we can probably improve the experience by trying to detect if you already read these pages. On a scale of 1 to 10 we’re close to 10 here in “getting in the way” and that goes against what Mint is, as an OS.. so I agree with you. We do want people to read these, but we’re certainly not doing this the right way. We’ll go back to the drawing board and try to make this better for the next cycle.
-http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2757#comment-114576

40hz · « **Reply #13 on:** January 13, 2015, 05:15 PM »

I posted about my complaints and got a nice response:

Edit by Clem: Hi, I understand it can be annoying but I also know for a fact many people will not actually click the link if they can just press Next, in fact many won’t even look at the page containing the link… With that said, we can probably improve the experience by trying to detect if you already read these pages. On a scale of 1 to 10 we’re close to 10 here in “getting in the way” and that goes against what Mint is, as an OS.. so I agree with you. We do want people to read these, but we’re certainly not doing this the right way. We’ll go back to the drawing board and try to make this better for the next cycle.
-http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2757#comment-114576
-Deozaan (January 13, 2015, 03:00 PM)

That's one of the things I like about the Linux world in general, and Mint in particular. There's still that personal touch.

I hope Clement & Co. can keep it up. (Because there was a time when Ubuntu was like that until Mark Shuttleworth began to see himself as the new Steve Jobs and insert his 'vision' into the developer end of that distro.)

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #14 on:** January 13, 2015, 08:07 PM »

The LTS versions of Linux usually run for 3-5 years rather than ten.

That doesn't mean nothing in it's core or kernal won't be changed during that period. It just means that any changes will be fully supported for the duration of the release.
...
To me, the two good reasons for going to a newer release are: (a) security patches; (b) better hardware and driver support.
-40hz (January 13, 2015, 01:09 PM)

All good stuff gang, maybe I can try to clarify a little on my (admittedly fuzzy) defs.

First, I considered security patches to explicitly be "non-core" in the sense that the "underlying engine" isn't getting overhauled dramatically; they're just doing like it says, "patching" something.

And even if a powerful new feature appears, if I don't use it, it's irrelevant in my case. But I normally (!) trust that the feature will get both refined and follow along to new versions. So eventually when enough stuff finally hits a milestone, it's time to upgrade. Then all the new stuff I've noted in passing shows up all at once, and for the same "re-tweak time", it feels more efficient and noticeable.

40hz · « **Reply #15 on:** January 14, 2015, 09:37 AM »

In the interests of completeness, Igor Ljubuncic over at his Dedoimedo blog posted a fairly negative review of Rebecca. He had problems with it, which comes as no surprise considering this was his setup:

The setup

I decided to try Rebecca on my Nvidia-powered HP laptop, a 2010 system, rather than the standard quad-boot T61, which I most often use for testing. The reason is, the Pavilion box already runs a dual-boot of Qiana and Windows 7 internally, and it's a pretty robust setup.

However, I did not want to displace the internal installation just yet, so I hooked up an external 640GB disk, which contains some five - used to be six - other distros, mostly older attempts from two years back or so. This means we will be testing a seven-boot setup and Nvidia drivers instead of the more usual SSD quad-boot combo. Not bad.

I'm not going to even bother elaborate on all the potential issues a setup like that is likely to experience. Suffice to say, using a different machine than you normally use for testing; and doing an install to an external drive in a seven-boot (!) arrangement is bound to introduce some difficulties 99% (or better) of all users trying or using Rebecca will never experience.

And troubles Igor had.

Unfortunately, I can't agree much with the validity of some of his conclusions:

Conclusion

What happened? I do not know. Maybe I was just being unlucky. Maybe my HP desktop sucks, and you should avoid Broadcom in Linux. But that's really a lame excuse, if you think about it, because both Qiana and Windows 7, resident on the internal hard disk, behave quite well. Which makes Rebecca a big disappointment.

I don't have a good way of glossing over the issues I've encountered during the preparation of this review. Mint 17.1 did not perform well in my tests. For a range of reasons, package management and desktop customizations were quite horrible, with crashes and hangs. Not acceptable. Then, there are a few other smaller issues that can and should be easily fixed. Overall, though, I can't recommend Rebecca. You'd better stay with Qiana. I will be doing some more testing in the future, for sure, but at the time being, you might skip this. Grade, 6/10.

Cheers.

To me, it sounds like he just got a bad install. External USB hard drives (which he seems to gloss over) are somewhat notorious for having sporadic problems with Linux installations. Hardly surprising since most of them were not engineered to be used as the regular boot device on a production system.

So ok...lets see...

Igor:

Doesn't really know what happened
Installed on an external drive - but dismisses that since Mint 17.0 is running correctly on the internal drive in the same machine. Apples and oranges...
Didn't bother to try a second installation in case there were timing or other issues with the external drive he was using
Didn't bother to try to install it in a sane manner rather than as a "cool" 7-boot science fair project

Yeah, ok...fine. He's entitled to his opinion I suppose. But his 'test' was hardly anything I consider "good enough" to go by.

The only reason I bothered to post this is because Dedoimedo is a very well-respected and widely read blog. And it's reputation is genuinely earned. It's a very good place to "learn a lot about a lot" as it's byline says. So when I see a really half-assed review that glosses over so many obvious issues with how it was done - and then reaches the conclusions it does, I have to say something. Not because I don't respect Igor and Dedoimedo. But rather because I do. And in this case, his review of Rebecca was not up to his usual high standards.

And the only reason I've bothered to post this here rather than as a comment on Dedoimedo is because Igor's blog isn't provisioned to accept user comments.

Which is fine. I've said what I have to say to the people I want to say it to.

Deozaan · « **Reply #16 on:** January 14, 2015, 02:00 PM »

Reading through his "review" it seems to me that almost all of the problems he encountered were due to the problems he had with the flaky broadcom adapter, which may or may not have been caused due to problems during the 7-boot install.

Package manager downloading things slowly? Yeah, that's probably because your wifi adapter is flaking out.
Some repositories are timing out or "broken"? Yeah, flaky wifi adapter.
Checksum mismatches? Probably didn't download it correctly due to your flaky adapter.

Et cetera.

40hz · « **Reply #17 on:** January 16, 2015, 01:50 PM »

regarding Rebecca KDE...

I downloaded the KDE flavor last night and finally got around to installing it to check it out. It's been a while since I've last booted into KDE. Mostly because I had no patience awhile back with where the devs were trying to take it. Which was before they finally woke up and decided to start listening to their users again. Those were some bad times for KDE. Thank the fates those days are behind us.

So after the usual format/install dialogs it was up and running.

You know what? It's fast. And it's nice. Very nice. Especially when you add some additional packages and start (re)exploring all those nifty "K-apps." I had forgotten how well done the Calligra suite of apps is.

Right now this is all running on an HP laptop (i5-2430/8Gb RAM/Radeon6400/Intel Wireless N-1030). Install was uneventful and everything came up perfectly when it was finished. WiFi ready to go after the password for the WAP got entered, screen resolution and color properly configured, wired connection good, etc. etc. etc. Repository links all solid and fast.

There's a lot to like here. If you are someone who doesn't care for Cinnamon/MATE/Xfce - or you're a KDE diehard - give this flavor of Mint a spin.

superboyac · « **Reply #18 on:** January 16, 2015, 05:02 PM »

Gwen7 · « **Reply #19 on:** February 12, 2015, 12:25 AM »

i gave it a go last weekend. everything went smoothly and upgraded fine. how nice!

ewemoa · « **Reply #20 on:** July 17, 2015, 11:47 PM »

Just tried for 17 -> 17.2.

So far it seems ok.

Deozaan · « **Reply #21 on:** July 18, 2015, 12:27 AM »

I'm still waiting on the Mint 17.2 XFCE's official release. But the upgrade from 17 to 17.1 went smoothly for me. I can't imagine it would get worse going from 17 or 17.1 to 17.2.

whippy · « **Reply #22 on:** July 26, 2015, 04:06 AM »

hi I would like to go from cinnamon 13.04 to 17.2 what is the easiest way to do it . I have a seperate home directory ..
Thanks

40hz · « **Reply #23 on:** July 31, 2015, 09:14 PM »

hi I would like to go from cinnamon 13.04 to 17.2 what is the easiest way to do it . I have a seperate home directory ..
Thanks
-whippy (July 26, 2015, 04:06 AM)

Did you mean Mint 13.04 to 17.2? The Cinnamon desktop is only up to version 2.6.13+ (Rafaela).

That's a big version jump for you. In-place upgrades began with Mint 17.0 so your only real alternative is to backup your home directory and do a clean install. Then migrate your data back. Also don't forget to export your favorites and back that file up too.

Luck!

ewemoa · « **Reply #24 on:** July 31, 2015, 11:09 PM »

I'm still waiting on the Mint 17.2 XFCE's official release.
-Deozaan (July 18, 2015, 12:27 AM)

May be you noticed already, but FWIW:

The upgrade path from Linux Mint 17 and 17.1 to Linux Mint 17.2 is now open for all editions (Cinnamon, MATE, KDE and Xfce).

Instructions on how to perform this upgrade are available at http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2871

via http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2887