Linux Mint 20 “Ulyana” Cinnamon released!

[Kadaitcha Man]

I just read the tips of how to upgrade from 19.3 to 20, and to tell you the truth - I am not crazy about. It basically stated that I will have to wipe all and start over. Backing up my photos,documents and downloads is not much of the issue, but how do I back up the virtualbox with win7 in it and all the installed software. Then come the issue of reinstalling Mint downloaded software. my Mint is running fine and I am not in a hurry. I will wait till you find safe way to upgrade ( if that possible).

Clearly you didn't read properly.

Upgrade instructions:

Announcements will be made in July with instructions on how to upgrade from Linux Mint 19.3.

[zcot]

In Release and Announcements section again?

I'd imagine Releases & Announcements would have a link to a blog entry.

Great! So, if I look past that 1st Official sticky post that says "Upgrade instructions" then the next post will be that blog post talking about it? and probably called "How to upgrade to Linux Mint 20", since the many posts in the past years have taken that same method?

hah! But you guys already know that!

[deepakdeshp]

I just read the tips of how to upgrade from 19.3 to 20, and to tell you the truth - I am not crazy about. It basically stated that I will have to wipe all and start over. Backing up my photos,documents and downloads is not much of the issue, but how do I back up the virtualbox with win7 in it and all the installed software. Then come the issue of reinstalling Mint downloaded software. my Mint is running fine and I am not in a hurry. I will wait till you find safe way to upgrade ( if that possible).

To backup vb, copy the folder which you have assigned for VB , it's as simple as that.

[deck_luck]

...
2. Clean upgrade = fresh install.

if ( upgrade == install ) return (FALSE) ; else return(TRUE) ;

The Captain said, "What we've got here is failure to communicate."

[Pjotr]

Upgrading.... it never ceases to be a controversial issue, which makes it also often rather amusing. There's nothing like a fiery controversy to sharpen the mind and make you feel alive. Well, maybe a big mug of strong hot coffee comes near.

My position is clear: for upgrades that entail a change of the entire Ubuntu code base, like the upgrade from Mint 19.x (Ubuntu 18.04) to Mint 20 (Ubuntu 20.04), I advise a clean upgrade. Which means a fresh installation. Regardless of what any potentially differing official recommendation might be.

I base my advice on my personal experience of 14 years of (nearly) 100 % Ubuntu and Mint use on the desktop. Everybody is of course entirely free to do as they please with my advice. Thank God it's a free world: we can say what we think and we can do our upgrades the way we prefer it.

[muffybean]

I appreciate it is best to do a clean install of Ulyana but I have so much customisation on my current 19.3 version it is going to be a lot of work to start over again with all my customisation's and re-installing programs.

If I create a new partition and install Ulyana to it and dual boot to that and my current 19.3? I'd like to get 20 up and running to as near to the configuration I have in 19.3 first before deleting 19.3 and going to Ulyana on its own.

[Kadaitcha Man]

I appreciate it is best to do a clean install of Ulyana but I have so much customisation on my current 19.3 version it is going to be a lot of work to start over again with all my customisation's and re-installing programs.

There's no need to do it all over again. In your home directory, from your file manager, show hidden files, select all and compress them to an archive such as tar.gz, do the installation and uncompress your backup into your new home directory. This time, when you install, consider creating a separate home partition to avoid this in future. You should leave 32-40GB for root.

[Pjotr]

In your home directory, from your file manager, show hidden files, select all and compress them to an archive such as tar.gz, do the installation and uncompress your backup into your new home directory.

Not quite my recommendation, because that indiscriminately transports all of the old user settings to the new Mint. This at best transports some cruft (unavoidably), and at its worst might also have negative effects on (the performance of) newer versions of certain applications. Which is one of the main reasons why, incidentally, I'm opposed to having a separate home partition.

My advice is: only transport those old settings that you really need. Usually only the web browser profiles and the e-mail client profile. And even for the web browser profiles I recommend to transport only the bookmarks. Make a fresh start with a fully predictable system.

[Buffy]

I would go the other way, to be safer. Backup all of your $HOME, making sure to get all the .* directories and files. Then you can restore the ones you need from there. I say that because theres ones that you don't realize you need until they're gone. Things like .local/share/rhythmbox (where your database and playlists are) and such. Better safe than sorry, IMHO...

[AndyMH]

I always do a clean install on a major version change. I have a separate /home partition which makes life easier. Only had one problem with old configs - evolution and that was easy to fix.

[deepakdeshp]

I have been upgrading from 17.0 to 19.3 without issues, this is mainly to avoid redoing the customization.

[trytip]

I just read the tips of how to upgrade from 19.3 to 20, and to tell you the truth - I am not crazy about. It basically stated that I will have to wipe all and start over. Backing up my photos,documents and downloads is not much of the issue, but how do I back up the virtualbox with win7 in it and all the installed software. Then come the issue of reinstalling Mint downloaded software. my Mint is running fine and I am not in a hurry. I will wait till you find safe way to upgrade ( if that possible).

relax and wait for the official instructions from the mint team. you won't have to wipe your drive, but you should already have everything backed up somewhere as nothing is 100% guaranteed. what works for me may not work for you or other way around

[zcot]

just saying that talking about transferring data for new installs or even doing some safety backup with updates, the Mint "Backup tool" is there. -pretty sure there's a good solution for all the problems we can conjure up.

[myface68]

I did clone sda to external ssd usbd drive. Tested - I can boot from and use it if main drive fail. I wait for instructions for safe install v20

[deepakdeshp]

I also await the upgrade to 20 instructions.

[Moem]

Moderator's note:
Muffybean's posts and the helpful answers given by (among others) AndyMH have now been merged into Muffybean's post: viewtopic.php?f=46&t=323356

Please keep support questions out of Announcement topics. Thank you.

[grioghair]

When can we expect an upgrade of 19.3 to 20 via software updater? A couple of weeks?

Steve

[Fizz]

This is excellent news- been looking forward to this. Out faster than i expected.

-Fizz

[Kadaitcha Man]

When can we expect an upgrade of 19.3 to 20 via software updater? A couple of weeks?

The answer to that question is at the link provided in the very first post of this thread.

[mattlach]

First off, bravo to the Mint team for resiting the ridiculousness that is snapd. I for one don't want the nightmare of duplication of dependencies, and potentially unpatched (for security) dependencies residing inside 3rd part snaps. Much better to have everything come from the repositories!

I'm not sure how I feel about this warpy thing. I generally do not like my computers communicating with other computers on any network unless I explicitly tell them to. I'm not sure how the warpiness works but I am guessing it uses some sort of multicast to detect other clients and allow you to connect to them. Generally that just kind of makes me go "yuck", and feel a little uneasy. I hope it can be disabled easily.

I'm also hoping I can still use ifupdown. I am not a huge fan of netplan.