Linux mint and Dist-upgrade?

[Nikolai_D]

Hi all,

Im using Mint 12 on my 3 PC's now. Workstation at Work, Desktop (Mac) at Home, and a laptop at home.
And i was kind of googling around abit to see how does dist upgrade goes from 12 to 13. Really want to use HUD. (i use Unity. I basically use Mint for restricted extras. Otherwise Ubuntu is fine for me. (or maybe Debian Sid soon..)).
So as it seems to look like is that Mint and Dist-upgrades are not supported. It means you are not going to be helped? Is it mainly this? And does it kinda mean that Dist-upgrade can easily go pretty wrong because Mint is not designed for it? Or isnt it really so? Like is it like it mostly going to be pretty much the same as if i had dist-upgraded pain Ubuntu? Or not really so?

Thanks in advance,
Sincerely yours,
Nikolai

[proxima_centauri]

From -> http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2

C2. "Package" upgrades

A "package" upgrade consists of the following steps:

Pointing APT to the repositories of the newer release
Asking APT to perform a full upgrade

APT is the package management system used by Linux Mint. Alternatively, some releases were given a graphical upgrade tool to perform these steps.

This way of upgrading Linux Mint should only be recommended to advanced users.

Here are the pros and cons of upgrading the system this way:

Cons:

Slow: APT will download the new version of all the packages installed on your system. Assuming you installed nothing at all, that's about 3GB of data.... using a fresh upgrade you could have downloaded all that data by simply getting the 700MB ISO.
Unreliable: Depending on your modifications, your sources, your added software and your configuration you could end up with a system that acts and feels really different than a brand new version of the newer Linux Mint release. You're far from the beaten track and the added features might not work as well on your system as they were designed to.
Risky: The temptation when you upgrade with APT is not to perform backups... since your partitions aren't overwritten, nothing "forces" you to make backups... think about the risk though.
Complicated: Packages conflict with each others, they can bring complex dependencies and put you in situations that are difficult to solve.

Pros:

Automated: APT does everything for you (well, until something goes wrong of course)
Real upgrade: A "fresh" upgrade is kind of like the new Linux Mint with your data on it... this in comparison feels more like "your system" running the newer version underneath.

As you can see, it's possible - just not recommended as the best option, if you can do a fresh install.

[Nikolai_D]

Thank you for the quick reply,
It seems that Mint with all its tweaks is indeed not quite designed as something to be upgrade-able. If that is so then its not kind of not my peace of cake i guess. But basically ill have to test the upgrade process first on my machines and see how it behaves. Ive already had dependency issues with upgrading some russoan fedora spin. Dont remember about Ubuntu. But i think it had some problems to. Before i tried Fedora i was at the point of switching from Ubuntu to Sid. Seemed stabler. Wait is Lmde Sid based?
Well ive heard at the pub from some bsd hackers from loadays that centos and debian have seamless upgrades. So i guess its possible. Just another more advanced users choice. I guess ill have to think abit about this all. Because i wanted to have a view different distros at different machines. So could notice a difference of overall experience at day to day usage. Maybe Sid at my desktop at home. Well ill see what ill do if i get some time around in the coming days.
And now time for some some basketball,

[Nikolai_D]

for the sake of testing i wanted to start with dist-upgrading my netbook. I wanted to install lmde there anyway so if it doesnt work so good then be it. So i googled and found here http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/62 but the link for the repos gives a link for Linux Mint 9. So its not the right link i suppose. Where do i find info or link for linux mint 13 repos? I had googled a bit around and didnt find it. Anyone?
thanks

[proxima_centauri]

You can't dist-upgrade from Linux Mint main edition to LMDE, they use different distributions for their base (Ubuntu & Debian). The only way to get LMDE is with a fresh install.

[Nikolai_D]

oh lol man no this is not what i mean.
I mean i want dist-upgrade mint 12 to 13. And if it doesnt work then ill fresh install lmde.