QUESTIONS ABOUT UPGRADING FROM MINT 11 TO MINT 13

[acw89]

Since its End-Of-Life, I have found it necessary to upgrade from Mint 11 to Mint 13 (I prefer an LTS release).

My questions to this forum are the following.

What are the necessary steps as well as the pit-falls to doing a Mint upgrade?

Are there any Utilities available to aid in the process?

If I save my home directory and then copy it back, will most of the settings stay for my programs and will things work or break.

My goal is to avoid, if possible, the reloading all the my apps I have as well as redoing the settings.

Now I know about saving the Thunderbird files and directories and have done that several times with success.

Just wondered if that would work for other programs.

I have about 6 years of user experience using Linux and moved to Mint from Ubuntu due to the Unity fiasco. Now Ubuntu had a way to upgrade that it saved all your stuff, but I do not see anything like that for Mint. If I am on the wrong track and just have to "redo it all" let me know and I can live with that. Just wanted to check as I am sure others have faced this same task.

Thanks in advance for your help and insight. I have found this Forum very educational.


This is my current system: System: Host xxxxxx Kernel 2.6.38-8-generic x86_64 (64 bit) Distro Linux Mint 11 Katya

[zerozero]

hi
mint doesn't have (and doesn't recommend) in-place upgrades: they are risky and more often than not the troubles are not worth it.

regarding your particular situation i wouldn't reuse the katya home in the new installation: you are going through several gtk versions (from afaik 2.32 to 3.4) and gnome made them incompatible.

you would experience a mix of old and new, a contamination that would break a lot of settings and try to track the responsible config files is a nightmare.

[acw89]

Thanks for your quick response...

So, you are suggesting that I should just backup my own stuff and make as many notes as I can about my own customisations,
after which I should just "bite the bullet" and reload all the programs I use and be done with it?

[zerozero]

basically yes.
you didn't stated which edition of katya are using but assuming that is the main edition (gnome) now in maya http://www.linuxmint.com/release.php?id=18 the closest you will have is mate (a fork of gnome2)

cinnamon is developed by the mint team and is based upon gnome3 technologies but giving the user a traditional look&feel (requires better graphics cards tho because is dependent on 3D)

[acw89]

I think I have the common distro and not anything more exotic like xfce or kde.
btw - is there a command to show that information? I was thinking of going with Cinnamon from
what I have read. I have a 64 bit Acer laptop and think that the hardware will work with it.
Have been reading that folks are fairly happy with it and some have commented that Mate is "bland".
I am not into fancy graphics but do like to customize. I really liked Ubuntu (my first Linux) until they forced
users into using Unity which was too 'cartoony' for me. Suddenly it was a PITA to find anything. I like real menus.
(Guess I won't be looking at Windows 8 any time soon - I only use Windows to do my taxes as I can not get Turbo Tax to run on Linux - LOL)

Again thanks for your time. Back in the day I worked with the Bell Labs Unix system in the switching networks
and that was how you learned. You had your White Book and you asked for help. Am glad to see Linux
is following the tradition of users helping users.

[acw89]

Well, the job is done. I took your suggestion ZeroZero and did a full clean install on my dual boot laptop
directing the Live CD to install over the old Linux partition. I do like the clean and crisp look
of Cinnamon. I found it quite a bit of work to recreate the environment I had before as the "how2"
for a few things have changed at bit. All the apps I normally use I reloaded and they work well.

I see that there are many themes for Cinnamon, but none of them seems to change the ugly Grey color on most of the
window structure. I will look to see if I can find anything that lets me change that to something less depressing.

thanks

[zerozero]

glad it worked out well for you

as for that theming question you'll have to look at cinnamon settings > themes > other settings

themes can be downloaded and installed exactly as in mint11: go to gnome-look.org or deviantArt and pick the one(s) that you want.

[acw89]

When looking for themes, do I have to look for those particular to Cinnamon? or would the GTK types work as well.

thanks

[zerozero]

ahh i forgot that detail sorry
as you are in mint13 you need to look for for gtk themes that are compatible with gtk3.4 and gtk2
http://gnome-look.org/index.php?xcontentmode=167
(here most will work: be careful with the ones that say gtk3.6)
additional cinnamon themes you can get here http://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/themes

[acw89]

Thanks for the specific information. I will check these out and see if I can find any I like.

When Cinnamon is updated is it correct to assume that the new version would show up in the regular updates to Mint 13?

BTW - what language are themes written in? Could I take an existing one and modify it? Just wondering.

Thanks again for your time and help.