Linux Mint upgrade vs. Ubuntu upgrade

[mhenriday]

I intend to upgrade from (64-bit) Mint 16 (Cinnamon desktop) to Mint 17 as soon as the latter is released. When performing upgrades, I generally do a backup of all my personal files - photos and documents - and then re-install all PPAs, programmes, and applications from scratch, which latter takes quite some time. I understand that mintBackup, which I've never used, could help to significantly shorten this process ; could anyone here point to a guide to using this tool so that I can give it a whirl when Mint 17 is released in a few weeks ?...

Thanks in advance !

Henri

[killer de bug]

Hi Henri!

Look at that tutorial by Clem: http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2
Backup is in section D.

It's quite old but still very true and accurate

[mhenriday]

Hi Henri!

Look at that tutorial by Clem: http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2
Backup is in section D.

It's quite old but still very true and accurate

Thanks for the link, killer de bug ! If Clement's tutorial remains the latest and greatest, it looks like the best I can do is to persist in my rather cumbersome but trustworthy method of backing up documents and photos, doing a fresh install of Mint, and then re-installing my PPAs, programmes, and applications....

I'm really looking forward till Mint 17 !...

Henri

[oscarus]

Hi Henri!

Look at that tutorial by Clem: http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2
Backup is in section D.

It's quite old but still very true and accurate

Thanks for the link, killer de bug ! If Clement's tutorial remains the latest and greatest, it looks like the best I can do is to persist in my rather cumbersome but trustworthy method of backing up documents and photos, doing a fresh install of Mint, and then re-installing my PPAs, programmes, and applications....

I'm really looking forward till Mint 17 !...

Henri

I hope it's still relevant (as Mint 17 hasn't been released yet), but I just wanted to point out that another thing that makes a clean install upgrade a little bit faster and more bearable is having a separate home partition. That lets you keep all of your files and settings in their own partition while the OS is installed in a different partition.
When you do a clean install, the process will only affect the OS partition and leave the home partition alone (i.e. it will not wipe all your files). You could (and probably should!) do a backup just to be safe, but if everything goes as planned, you skip the step of having to restore all of your files every time you do a clean install. You still have to deal with the PPAs and reinstalling all the applications, but that stuff simpler to deal with.