I’ve been wondering why Mint doesn’t seem to have an automatic major version upgrade built in? For those that have an opinion, do you agree with not having this? Why/why not?

I’ve been running Mint 21 for over a year now. I started using it not long before Mint 22 came out and have been dragging my feet on upgrading in fear of breaking something and having to reinstall (and losing something in the process). I’m in the process of setting up proper backups so I’ll probably do it after those are set up (or maybe wait until Mint 23).

  • Mactan@lemmy.ml
    4·
    2 months ago

    I don’t think I’ve ever had a debian major upgrade go well. always easier to reinstall, but the stakes are so low on my own devices

    • limelight79@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 months ago

      Funny that’s how my Slackware upgrades always went, but I’ve had a great experience with Debian every time.

    • halet@programming.dev
      1·
      2 months ago

      Interesting. If you’ve used this on Linux, could you share your experience with and thoughts on it?

  • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
    32·
    2 months ago

    That would make Mint unstable. That is exactly what unstable means in Linux context. There are debian based rolling-release distros, including Debian Sid. This is one of the reasons people choose Arch, because it’s a rolling release you never have to worry about version.

    There’s a good chance you might break stuff by upgrading major version like you fear, and that’s why it doesn’t happen automatically. That being said it should be safe, but good on you to prepare backups.

  • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    Upgrades between major versions - since they can be radically different - is generally not an effective feature.

    Having said that, conectiva’s apt-rpm could upgrade and downgrade between major versions; and it worked really well!

  • adarza@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    any upgrade or update can ‘break’ something.

    mint does have an upgrade path from one major version to the next. the upgrade tool might not be available immediately upon the release of the next version, but in your case it has been around awhile.

    https://linuxmint-user-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/upgrade-to-mint-22.html

    backups are, of course, your responsibility, as is any unexpected manual customizations or software added from outside mint repositories.