You could upgrade with the GUI within a version number ie. 19.0>19.3 but not between major versions (19.3>20). It's only since version 20>21 in Mint that you had a GUI that would take you to the next version.
Upgrading Linux is messy
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britechguy
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That's not been my experience. I did rafts of Win 7 and 8.1 to 10 upgrades and have done some, but fewer, 10 to 11 upgrades. Had the hardware requirements MS has in place not been in place, I'd have done a lot more.
nlinecomputers
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It’s not going to be the experience of most of us here. But we are an elite club. The average end user or most businesses never do that. Especially as PC costs have declined.
Sky-Knight
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You don't have to use SSHD or know how to configure it to maintain a desktop. That's just how you get a shell remotely should you need it. Essential for servers, not workstations.
As for the rest, configuring APT is a core skill for any Debian based distribution, and has very wide use. But yes, it's an IT professional level skill, it's not an every man level skill. At best it's a prosumer level skill.
Sky-Knight
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Any business with any actual budget will not upgrade machines, they'll replace them. If they have a provider that's willing to recycle them at a decent cost that makes sense... then they'll do the upgrade.
Home users upgrade only because Microsoft pushes the button for them.
So yeah, you're right, people don't upgrade. Unless some outside force does it for them.
britechguy
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Microsoft has not literally, or even figuratively, "pushed the button for them," in regard to either Feature Updates or Version Upgrades for several years now. They position a message in the Windows Update Pane that states that either one of these things is available, but the end user must activate the "Download and install" link before either occurs.
The hue and cry about full automatic updates was deafening. Personally, I wish MS had stuck with them, as many home and small business users simply will not click on the "Download and install" link no matter what. Eventually, for Feature Updates, if you ignore it long enough that the version and build you currently have goes out of support there is supposed to be a full automatic update, but I have yet to see one of those occur. Usually something happens where someone gives a nudge and says, "Why on earth haven't you clicked on the Download and install link by now?" But the nudge is necessary.
britechguy
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Which is one of the reasons I keep asking everyone to keep in mind that there really are "all kinds" who serve different demographics who are regulars here. The statement, "People don’t generally upgrade ANY computer," is and always has been completely false in my world. I don't expect that to change.
The residential market exists, and they do upgrade.
Sky-Knight
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I've seen it happen, on my own equipment. There was a bug, it did this... yes it was fixed. No, it's not "normal" behavior. And yes, it does happen by users, because now it pesters them to death via popup add.
So you can "authorize" a Win11 upgrade by trying to dismiss the notification for it that flies up in the lower right corner.
I'd be angrier about it, but it doesn't matter. Win11 capable machines should be Win11 now, there's no reason for them not to be.
I've also upgraded a ton of things over the years. But a user bringing you a box to pay you to upgrade it is NOT the user upgrading themselves.
britechguy
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Well, had the original assertion been about who was actually doing the upgrading, you'd be right. It wasn't and you aren't.
There are tons of people who upgrade (and I'm still hearing from people who haven't done the Win11 upgrade on their machines). I don't even take in machines for upgrades unless the client insists. I advise them to hit that Download and Install link near bedtime, answer the couple of questions that come up (including to make sure they're keeping files and apps), and to go to bed after the process starts. The most likely outcome is a perfectly functioning Windows 11 box in the morning. A rare (as in it has yet to happen to me personally) outcome would be a rollback to Windows 10 if the upgrade failed. I haven't had an upgrade, whether to Windows 10 or Windows 11 fail catastrophically in ages now.
What I forgot (or never knew) is that there is no link like this for Linux users for the next version of Linux and that happens every five years.
backwoodsman
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You can always just use a rolling-release distro and eliminate the whole upgrade problem. I haven't done that yet because there's one particular desktop environment I like and want to keep using, and also I want to stay with Debian, but most don't have those requirements. I've been wanting to play around with Debian Sid (Testing), which is essentially a rolling release, to see if it would be stable enough, but haven't got around to it yet.
Sky-Knight
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Well... here again where details get you.
Linux is a kernel, not an operating system. Mint is an operating system.
Mint has upgrade announcements. Linux has upgrade announcements.
The former a user might care about, the latter they will not. The latter only interests those that study operating systems on a detailed level to service them on an advanced level. And even then that interest is variable, because unless you're writing code for the kernel, you probably just care that you're using the "current" one, because you know there are security updates you need by being "current."
But the announcements do indeed exist, but they are 100% optin, they will not advertise it in your face, and you have to go to the specific website to read it, and you must do all that on your own with no prompting. Because "security", "privacy", and "ethics."
nlinecomputers
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Yes but those are metrics that are actively tracked by the industry. What we do ALL OF US HERE is only about 5% total PC sales. For every client you assist with an upgrade there are 20 more users who will never do so and never call you.
Sky-Knight
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Yep, statistically speaking... end users do not upgrade their systems.
Most of these people buy $400 crap boxes from Walmart every 8 months and throw them away when they break.
What floors me is the number of people that'll spend good money on a laptop say $2000 or so, and treat them just as disposably!
Most of these people buy $400 crap boxes from Walmart every 8 months and throw them away when they break.
What floors me is the number of people that'll spend good money on a laptop say $2000 or so, and treat them just as disposably!
britechguy
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This also does not comport with my experience. It's not that people don't buy these, they do, but most end up with all sorts of stuff on them that they don't want to lose when they break, so they can't just toss them away. They end up paying more for someone like myself to get all the data they want (be it photos, documents, etc.) off of the computer than it would have cost them to have bought a mid-grade or refurbed business class machine to begin with (when you factor in that initial $400).
I've also had way more than my share of clients who seem to want to cling to old, dead, dying, or obsolete machines for dear life, which I'll never understand.
When the user doesn't backup (which is most of them) and they use a machine like most people do, and that means not everything or necessarily anything is on OneDrive, just throwing them away just isn't happening.
NviGate Systems
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This would make for an amazing undergrad paper on the use and perception of computers. Truly amazing if it were done geographically as there are some interesting data points when you consider location, finances and personal mindset.
Galdorf
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Never had an issue updating Ubuntu it asks if you want to update to newest build click yes sit back for a few mins and your running newest version have done this over a dozen times no issues on multiple machines.
Also i would prob start fresh if your build is pre-docker install newest version and first piece of software would be docker or docker alternative like Podman running docker is so much better than installing so much software with so many dependencies and updating is sooo much faster and easier.
Also i would prob start fresh if your build is pre-docker install newest version and first piece of software would be docker or docker alternative like Podman running docker is so much better than installing so much software with so many dependencies and updating is sooo much faster and easier.
coffee
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Always full installs on major releases. The point releases tend to do just fine to do an in place upgrade. If you go into the linux mint forums you will notice that its littered with posts of users trying to do an in place major upgrade. The problem is over time they add PPA's and the libraries will change or something like PHP is a version or two newer and your older programs might be setup to run off PHP7.4 or something.I'm a long time Linux user but by no means an expert. I'd become complacent with my Linux installs and was still sitting on Mint 18.3 (Mate) from 2017 -. I thought I could jump straight to the latest 21.3. Noooo!!! I had to use the command line upgrade manager to move to 19.0, then GUI to 19.3, then command line to 20.0 (manually fix GRUB), then to 20.3 and then to 21.0 and finally 21.1 but by the time I got there there was no data or user programs left and many things didn't work. Yes, just like Windows I should have done a clean install but I wanted to see how this went in Linux instead of Windows. I was totally frustrated and underwhelmed. There may be a way to drop a 21.3 DVD in a 18.3 machine and come out the other end with a 21.3 machine and all the customer data and programs intact but I don't know of it and couldn't find it with immense Googling. Mint does have Timeshift included and I'm restoring back to a save around 19.1 (or even 18.3) and will go from there again. Regardless, this all humbles my Linuxness.......
I am at 20.3 una and its good for another two years. So, No need to upgrade. I will ride it out and then backup my home directory wipe it and then restore certain dot folders like .mozilla / .thunderbird ect...
GTP
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I've never had an issue upgrading Mint on any of my PC's.
I just run the commands in Terminal and let it go.
I just run the commands in Terminal and let it go.
coffee
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I assume your talking about updating not an actual upgrade from one full release to another (v. 20 to 21 as an example).
Yes, I just either run 'apt update && apt upgrade' and everything is normally fine.
The one thing that I do have to watch are upgrades of PHP. I run some webservers and this can screw them up if for example your running Apache2 and it depends on PHP7.4 and you get an upgrade to PHP8.x . Things can break.
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