Hello Coetzee,Coetzee wrote:This is really bad news . For how long is a Mint release supported? I know the latest Suse (installed on my laptop) has a long support life. I installed Mint 16 on my desktop after reading a "recent" review in a Linux Format magazine. I read that Mint 17 will be released but I thought that there would still be support and upgrades to support the old release. This is another thing to consider when thinking of switching distros.xenopeek wrote:Welcome to Linux Mint
Unfortunately I have some bad news for you IDK why you installed Linux Mint 16, seeing as it is supported only till July 17th 2014 (barely 3 more weeks before it becomes obsolete and unsupported): http://www.linuxmint.com/download_all.php.
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The recommended way to upgrade is described here: http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2. You can "upgrade in place" without reinstalling also, but that requires some knowledge of using Linux and being able to recover from problems.
Thanks for your feedback
I know of one experienced Mint user who is still running Mint 9 (Mint 9 or so - I'm looking at you Dr Hu ); We are both in a learning process on this point, and I'll be asking other here for details on how to proceed, but I don't believe the loss of "support" in Mint/Linux means the same thing that it does in Windows.
I think the 'loss of support' here refers to Mint's Update Manager no longer advising on updates for an 'obsolete' Mint edition, but that those updates are available through apt; if that's so then, at worst, using apt-get -s upgrade (documented many places, but here also) will serve near the same purpose (it will show you what's to be updated/upgraded); the one thing that doing that would lack is the "caution levels" that the Update Manager offers (I wonder how many Mint users actually pick and choose on the basis of those cautionary levels) - the response to that is to backup one's system (which is not a bad idea in any case) before a significant update and to ask (in these forums) about possible dangers associate with individual package updates/upgrades.
Adding to /etc/apt/sources.list may be necessary but, if so, asking on these forums which repositories to add should solve that problem (if it exists).
Comments? Anyone?
Regards,