Cross-Upgrade path from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS to Mint 13

[recluce]

I see a lot of growing frustration about Unity over on the Ubuntu forums - and by now it is very clear that the sentiment with the Ubuntu developers about Unity is "My Way or the Highway". Most of the Unity-frustrated stick to 10.04 LTS for their everyday working environment - like many of the silent users that use LTS versions exclusively.

I see a huge potential for Mint here, if the Gnome Classic look and feel is preserved in Mint 13 (be it through Gnome 2, Mate or an adapted Gnome 3), to benefit from the frustration of many Ubuntu users: implement a cross-upgrade tool that will upgrade Ubuntu 10.04 LTS to Mint 13 LTS and make it very well known on the net through the usual viral methods (OMG Ubuntu, facebook, twitter, Heise Online for Germany, etc). You should see a significant growth in the userbase.

And yes, I volunteer for testing....

[SiKing]

I would have to second this idea! Especially after reading all Mint-related the comments here: http://www.osnews.com/comments/25234

[vrkalak]

For both Ubuntu and Mint main-editions ... a 'fresh' install is always recommended over a system upgrade.

An upgrade, of the system, from one version to the next newer version is possible but not recommended.

To do a cross-system-upgrade from one LTS to the next LTS ... is definitely not recommended.
There are way too many changes, between them ... about 4 releases and 2 years worth of updates.
To many things have changed from one LTS version to the next newer LTS; from the kernel on up.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Just for the sake of argument:
Just the 'updates' - in 6 months there is an average of 1,000 updates, to the tune of 600 Mb download.
Image the amount of updates you would have over a 2 year period? (4,000 updates and 3.6 Gb downloaded)

[recluce]

For both Ubuntu and Mint main-editions ... a 'fresh' install is always recommended over a system upgrade.

An upgrade, of the system, from one version to the next newer version is possible but not recommended.

To do a cross-system-upgrade from one LTS to the next LTS ... is definitely not recommended.
There are way too many changes, between them ... about 4 releases and 2 years worth of updates.
To many things have changed from one LTS version to the next newer LTS; from the kernel on up.

You are sort of preaching to the choir. I personally would do a new install to go from one LTS to another, but that is you, me and tech-savvy Linux users.

A cross-update tool would be a great way to help the not so tech-savvy users along and into the Mint camp - in other words, help the "average" guy that is frustrated with the developments over in Ubuntu land AND to increase the Mint userbase at the same time!

Just for the sake of argument:
Just the 'updates' - in 6 months there is an average of 1,000 updates, to the tune of 600 Mb download.
Image the amount of updates you would have over a 2 year period? (4,000 updates and 3.6 Gb downloaded)

Sorry, but that doesn't fly. While there may be 4,000 updates in total over 2 years, those are not updates for 4,000 different packages - a couple of hundred packages is more like it - with the "usual suspects" being updated every couple of months/weeks. How could the total download for an LTS -> LTS upgrade (with or without modifying the install from Ubuntu to Mint) significantly exceed the total number of installed packages? So you are probably looking more at 700MB to 1GB (that is what I have seen for 8.04 to 10.04, for example).

[proxima_centauri]

Sorry, but that doesn't fly. While there may be 4,000 updates in total over 2 years, those are not updates for 4,000 different packages - a couple of hundred packages is more like it - with the "usual suspects" being updated every couple of months/weeks. How could the total download for an LTS -> LTS upgrade (with or without modifying the install from Ubuntu to Mint) significantly exceed the total number of installed packages? So you are probably looking more at 700MB to 1GB (that is what I have seen for 8.04 to 10.04, for example).

Regardless, I believe the main point was one will end up spending more time downloading updates than downloading a new .iso.

This is just my two cents but:
The realistic point is feasibility - it's a good idea; but I think in the end the kind of script required to turn an Ubuntu install into a Linux Mint system is tricky enough - without adding in the possibility of a system upgrade.

I do agree that such a tool would be useful and boost Linux Mint's popularity with the frustrated Ubuntu crowd.

[recluce]

Sorry, but that doesn't fly. While there may be 4,000 updates in total over 2 years, those are not updates for 4,000 different packages - a couple of hundred packages is more like it - with the "usual suspects" being updated every couple of months/weeks. How could the total download for an LTS -> LTS upgrade (with or without modifying the install from Ubuntu to Mint) significantly exceed the total number of installed packages? So you are probably looking more at 700MB to 1GB (that is what I have seen for 8.04 to 10.04, for example).

Regardless, I believe the main point was one will end up spending more time downloading updates than downloading a new .iso.

I understand that an upgrade takes more time to do than downloading a new iso image, but this issue is really not that relevant here. People who know their Linux boxes (you, me, many others here) tend to do a new install and probably have their /home directory on a separate partition anyway. The people who upgrade are those that are either uncomfortable with a new install or, most likely, overwhelmed with the task. These are the people that do distro upgrades - and stay with Ubuntu for the time being, even if they don't like Unity and the general direction that Ubuntu is heading in.

This is just my two cents but:
The realistic point is feasibility - it's a good idea; but I think in the end the kind of script required to turn an Ubuntu install into a Linux Mint system is tricky enough - without adding in the possibility of a system upgrade.

I do agree that such a tool would be useful and boost Linux Mint's popularity with the frustrated Ubuntu crowd.

This is where one of the people writing those scripts would have to chime in. If we assume that there will be an upgrade script from Mint 9 LTS to Mint 13 LTS, the cross-upgrade could be broken down into two parts:

1.) Script to convert Ubuntu 10.04 LTS into Mint 9 LTS (new, extra work to be done)
2.) Script to upgrade Mint 9 LTS to Mint 13 LTS (which would be done anyway)

Looking at it this way might make it a bit more feasible.