Easier way to upgrade releases

[A Future Pilot]

I know there's been a lot of discussion about wanting an easier way to upgrade between releases, but I know the reasons against doing the way Ubuntu does it make perfect sense.

So I had an idea for a better way to do it. What if in the initial install the partitioning defaults to something like this (using extended partitions in the case of a dual-boot):

/
/home
swap
/install (or something like it)

Then the user would use the handy upgrade tool (which would need to be created ) to download the release of his choice, which would then reboot, mounted in the /install partition (using something like unetbootin). Then the user would be given the option (if he hasn't already) to back up anything outside of the /home partition to an external or network drive. Then the installer would install the new release leaving everything in the /home intact. After the install completes it would reboot into the user's new release, and he could then restore everything with mint backup etc.

This way users don't have to burn new disks every time they want to upgrade, and with mint backup built in (and the /home partition never being touched anyway) it would be more of a "one click" approach to do a proper upgrade.

Is there any reason this wouldn't work? (Sadly I don't have a computer handy to test this on...but I would assume it should work fine.)

[lahirdenganselamat]

Been doing that on my Vbox last night, such a good way to do dist-upgrade (Katya - Lisa) thanks..

some notes about it (CMIIW):
- since the ISO's mounted on disk, the installer showing something like "cannot edit bla bla bla, do you want the installer unmount the partition?" So I cannot edit (including formatting partition) using the installer. I have to do that with gparted before running the installer.

- that way, the /home partition will become fragmented. I know that ext* not easily get fragmented (compared to NTFS or FAT), but I think daily usage, combination of big-small files, and some regular disk operation will make the partition get fragmented. I still search for a way to do an online defrag on ext4 filesystem (without recompiling the kernel).

- its better to make a new username (due to desktop configuration)