Linux Mint Forums

A very newbie question, but pertinent to a user situation in the family (not me) I am addressing.

I will install Linux Mint 8 this week on that person's laptop. Then transport it to her, in another city, ready to use. It will not be practical, when the new version of Mint appears, for her to do the steps involved in a clean install, and I might not be there to do it myself until a good while later.

When the Mint 8 support from the team ends, and no update is done by a user, what happens. In practical terms?

I presume she can continue to choose to update the browser and a few other things with nothing breaking, for quite a while afterward. Is that so?

Maybe it should be put this way: One year from the installation of Mint 8, how will it be operating if she does not update, what problems will be seen?

Frankly, this six-month update cycle seems to be the biggest deterrent to adoption of Linux by most people, once they inquire. When it involves broken apps and lost personal files and such as that, anyway. That is why a successful cloud OS might be the answer for most people, if a successful one ever happens. Where they will not face this update cycle and its difficulties for them.

Not me, mind you. I love Mint and Linux generally.

If you take Mint LTS as an example, then it's repositories are current, until the next LTS is released.
that is a time frame of 3-4 years or so, then the cycle starts again, if you continued with that older LTS, then no further updates would be made available for you to download. Your O/S would still continue to be quite usable for a few years after that.

Likewise, Mint 8 would be updated from the repositories, for about a year or so, but not as long as the LTS support is.
after that, it would still be quite usable for a few years after that.

for example, you can still use Firefox2.0, today, if you had no way of updating it,
but it may not display some sites correctly, anymore.

However, you could visit her, say twice in five years, to update it manually

Thanks, that is about the way I guessed.

If I could wait until mid-2010, we would have an LTS version to begin with. But she needs Mint 8 now, to replace a malware-destroyed Windows OS. So in June
I will plan to update to the Mint 9 and she will be in fine shape for three years maybe.

A more exact time table is -

1. Standard release (ex. Mint 8 ) - supported via Updater for 18 months from issue date

2. Long Term Support release (Mint 9) - supported for 3 years.

All versions are usable after losing support, they just will not get updates via Update Manager or Synaptic.