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I have been using Bianca as my primary OS since March in a dual Linux/XP setup with ordinary hardware. I fancy giving Cassandra a try. But before I use all that bandwidth downloading the ISO I wanted to know what was the best way of upgrading.

Based on my newbie understanding these are the options

1. Tweak Bianca to 'make' it Cassandra. I'd have to update the kernel and redirect the repositories and it all sounds rather involved and even then I'd probably still miss out on things like the new artwork.

2. Download the Live CD, burn it, put it in the drive and reboot... and then?

I was hoping that the Live CD would detect that I had Bianca installed and do all the stuff in point 1 automatically leaving my precious data intact. But I rather doubt it will be that simple.
When I was first getting the ATI drivers to work on my system I killed the GUI quite a few times (I am an experienced Dos/Windows user after all). One of the solutions I tried was to boot my computer using the Live CD of Bianca thinking it would be able to see the Linux ext3 partitions. No such luck the Live CD can not see ext3 partitions. If you know a way of flipping a switch to fix this I would be happy to hear what it is.
So how do I install Cassandra over Bianca?
Do I have to carve another chunk out of my NTFS partition and make another entry on the GRUB and just leave Bianca where it is?
Will the Cassandra installer detect the ext3 partition and say 'hey you've got a Linux partition do you want to wipe this and put Cassandra there?' Losing all my precious data in the process.
Is there another way?

If you have /home on separate partition then you can probably upgrade by installing over Bianca and leaving /home intact (don't format /home). If you have Bianca installed in a single root "/" partition then it will probably be best to back up your data and do a clean install.

Give us an idea of how your hard drive is partitioned and I'm sure someone with more knowledge than I will give you a definitive answer.

Looked up details in Nautilus and it says the location of everything (including home) is root (/). To be honest when I installed Mint I just went for the standard option. So what does Mint do by default?
Also so Cassandra will detect I have Bianca installed and try and install itself in the existing Bianca partition (about 20GB on a 200GB disk) and will delete everything on the existing Bianca partition.
Also on the GRUB Bianca will just disappear? This may be a very obvious question it's just that I still have two options on the GRUB referring to the old kernel.
I know we should all back up anything important but believe me I'm drowning in DVD-R's right now. Blu Ray burner seems more and more attractive. Whole hard disk backed up to 4 discs.

bwjpg wrote:I have been using Bianca as my primary OS since March in a dual Linux/XP setup with ordinary hardware. I fancy giving Cassandra a try. But before I use all that bandwidth downloading the ISO I wanted to know what was the best way of upgrading.

Based on my newbie understanding these are the options

1. Tweak Bianca to 'make' it Cassandra. I'd have to update the kernel and redirect the repositories and it all sounds rather involved and even then I'd probably still miss out on things like the new artwork.

2. Download the Live CD, burn it, put it in the drive and reboot... and then?

I was hoping that the Live CD would detect that I had Bianca installed and do all the stuff in point 1 automatically leaving my precious data intact. But I rather doubt it will be that simple.
When I was first getting the ATI drivers to work on my system I killed the GUI quite a few times (I am an experienced Dos/Windows user after all). One of the solutions I tried was to boot my computer using the Live CD of Bianca thinking it would be able to see the Linux ext3 partitions. No such luck the Live CD can not see ext3 partitions. If you know a way of flipping a switch to fix this I would be happy to hear what it is.
So how do I install Cassandra over Bianca?
Do I have to carve another chunk out of my NTFS partition and make another entry on the GRUB and just leave Bianca where it is?
Will the Cassandra installer detect the ext3 partition and say 'hey you've got a Linux partition do you want to wipe this and put Cassandra there?' Losing all my precious data in the process.
Is there another way?

Clem said he would post the upgrade info later.
http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopi ... a&start=45

One way to do it can be:
Follow the advice in the wiki
http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php ... _partition
I moved /home and consequently wrote the wiki article
When I upgraded to Cassandra I formated / and made a fresh install
All my settings were kept, even the wallpaper I used and passwords in Firefox (but I've moved the Ff profile to a NTFS partition to share it with XP, but I don't use XP any more ) It's really simple
Of course you have to make a new partition, but that should not be a big deal. I think all installers I've seen defaults to one partition