Linux Mint Forums

Ok,

There are no upgrade instructions for the KDE CE. Do the instructions for basic editions apply?

http://www.linuxmint.com/blog/?p=1144

I'd prefer NOT to do a clean install. For one thing, when I installed Gloria (my first experience with LinuxMint), there was NO indication that there is no upgrade path, and no suggestion to make a separate /home partition. So I have everything in a single / partition (+ swap).

So is this a simple matter of changing sources.list to helena/karmic and running apt upgrade/dist-upgrade a few times, or what?

Zarhan wrote:Ok,


I'd prefer NOT to do a clean install. For one thing, when I installed Gloria (my first experience with LinuxMint), there was NO indication that there is no upgrade path, and no suggestion to make a separate /home partition. So I have everything in a single / partition (+ swap).

So is this a simple matter of changing sources.list to helena/karmic and running apt upgrade/dist-upgrade a few times, or what?

In theory, yes. But I found out just yesterday that real life may be different. Means, there are some risks to it as long as the Mint team has not officially declared the upgrade path valid.

It may work for you, or may not work for you. See this thread, where I described how to install KDE alongside Gnome (of course slightly different problem). It had worked for me - but another user ended up on a commandline with broken kdm/gdm:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 91#p239040

You may consider to save your /home directory somewhere, as well as any other dirs where data is stored. That way, a clean reinstall may be possible while still preserving all your settings and data.

i've upgrading from gloria kde to helena kde before this by upgrading mint meta kde to ver. 8.1.0 from synaptic but there's many issues with mint tools afterward (at least for me), for example i cant use software manager anymore etc. so many troubles to upgrade all manually in which when i want to upgrade amarok, it always want to remove many other components as well, INCLUDING KDE BASE PLASMA! i'm quite new with linux, so i decide just to backup the settings that i want (internet browsers setting etc) and just do a fresh install of mint helena kde. meaning to say, olligod was right. yes, you can upgrade but only if you dont mind to spend an effort, quite a long time for it (and not as lazy as me LOL )

feed3 wrote:i've upgrading from gloria kde to helena kde before this by upgrading mint meta kde to ver. 8.1.0 from synaptic but there's many issues with mint tools afterward (at least for me), for example i cant use software manager anymore etc. so many troubles to upgrade all manually in which when i want to upgrade amarok, it always want to remove many other components as well, INCLUDING KDE BASE PLASMA!

The Mint-Meta-KDE is the "evildoer" - it spoiled the party over at the other thread, too. I am sure, in time there will be an official upgrade path.

olligod wrote: The Mint-Meta-KDE is the "evildoer" - it spoiled the party over at the other thread, too. I am sure, in time there will be an official upgrade path.

Actually, it seems there still isn't an official upgrade path even for upgrading to Gloria-KDE and they have had plenty of time. Hence I really hope that someone *has* done the upgrade, knows how to address the problems, and survived.

Hi all,

I have the same problem with Gnome on a DELL inspiron 910. Here the issue is that this netbook has only 4 GB disk and it is mostly used by my wife. (If the upgrade goes wrong she may kill me)

on the other hand I don't want to be stuck to Gloria forever.
I tried Helena on a usb stick and the main issue is the wifi driver, it seems maneageable.

Questions:
1) saving the home dir is enough ? (how shall I rebuild the user after the installation)
2) how can I save any additional application I might have installed (i.e. evolution) ? shall I reinstall everything ?
3) How can I rollback if something goes wrong ?
4) In six months time shall I repeat the same procedure ? it does not seem very practical as LinuxMint is my "production" OS the only installed on her laptop (please consider my wife, not IT person, was educated on linux and I am proud of it).
I believe that if we want to spread the linux usage to not IT people the seasonality of releases has to be overcome

regards
benny59

benny59 wrote:1) saving the home dir is enough ? (how shall I rebuild the user after the installation)

Copy each users home directory to some external storage device. The home directory contains a lot of hidden files and folders that include default application settings for some of the default KDE applications, your Firefox profile, and a bunch of others. I usually login as root from the login manager the first time I start the computer up after the install and copy all the contents of the home directory back over to the new user that was created during the install, then logout and log back in with the regular account.

benny59 wrote:2) how can I save any additional application I might have installed (i.e. evolution) ? shall I reinstall everything ?

You will need to reinstall additional applications.

benny59 wrote:3) How can I rollback if something goes wrong ?

Look at an application called remastersys.

benny59 wrote:4) In six months time shall I repeat the same procedure ? it does not seem very practical as LinuxMint is my "production" OS the only installed on her laptop (please consider my wife, not IT person, was educated on linux and I am proud of it).

Keep in mind that you don't have to upgrade every six months. I know several people who only use the LTS releases and are perfectly happy that way. Some other people I know only upgrade once a year.