Upgrading directly from 19.3 to 20.1

[wildalaska]

What a hassle. But maybe others can benefit from my technique, as on Youtube I was unable to find any reasonable methods to upgrade directly from 19.3 to 20.1. Here is what I did:
1. Downloaded the 20.1 ISO.
2. Right clicked and verified the integrity.
3. Right clicked and let it make a bootable USB. Wow, this is a really nice feature; kudos to whoever did it.
4. Booted a live session to the USB.
5. In the disk manager options, I selected "something else," and then told it to reformat the partition with 19.3, defining "/" as the root (request to Mint developers: when you give the user the root error message, maybe you could suggest this? I had to poke around to figure it out.). It was smart enough to correctly reconfigure GRUB. All in all, the install went very well, MANY thanks to the developers.)
6. Importing my 19.3 T-bird emails and contacts was a giant hassle. T-B 78.7.1, oddly, is unable to import from the T-B version used in 19.3. Rather user hostile, if you ask me. So I had to decipher the 78.7.1 profile structure and do it manually. Started by browsing to the 19.3 profile, which I copied from an archive. Biggest hassles were that 78.7.1 mindlessly insisted on reading all my emails from 2009. All 26000 of them. No option to skip this. OK, so I let it, took 5 hours. Then I closed T-B, renamed the mostly useless new inbox and its associated .msf file, then copied the correct inbox/msf from my archive to the mail folder. Then opened T-B and only moved the few recent emails to the old inbox. When I did that, T-B did something very dangerous: It wanted to delete the entire inbox - which would be OK once I determine it's safe; it did this again when transferring several messages between two other important folders. This is a dangerous feature that should be deleted ASAP before someone ruins their email.
7. Lastly, the 78.7.1 T-B was unable to recognize or import my old, and large, 19.3 address book. I fixed this by copying my abook.mab to the first level in the profile folder that has the inbox. Good thing I'm an old dog with computers. I pity those with less experience.

Finally, all seems well but why did T-B make so many (and unnecessary, it seems to me) changes and fail to see the need to import from older T-B versions? AND I hate the new email compose form, esp. the way it displays addresses. Hard to read. It would be nice if 20.1 had an option to use earlier T-B versions.

[deepakdeshp]

You can open an issue with TB forum.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/new

[Hoser Rob]

I agree that sounds like a major PITA but the thread title sounds like this is a Mint release upgrade problem, it has nothing to do with that and everything to do with thunderbird reinventing the wheel. I'd be on the TB forum too.

[wildalaska]

Read my original post. It mainly concerned upgrading from Mint 19.3 to 20.1 (items 1 to 5). The TB comment was just a peripheral issue, but germane because 20.1 forced the TB upgrade.

[AZgl1800]

IMO,
TB email is garbage.

I deleted it and blacklisted it in the Update Manager.

It always takes 3 eons to sync up to my Yahoo email account.

why?
like you, I have emails in Folders that go back 15 years for archival reasons.
think lawyers and counter suits with a trucking firm.

TB insists, and does NOT allow you to just set it up and NOT sync the folders until after the install.

I have done away with every email app on a PC period, all are junk.

I only use Yahoo web, and gmail web....
those can be accessed from anything that can access the dark web, if need be.

on my Cellphone, I use AquaMail as it does what I want it to, when I want it to, not when the holy gods in the neanderthal world decide it has to be done.

[Hoser Rob]

Read my original post. It mainly concerned upgrading from Mint 19.3 to 20.1 (items 1 to 5). The TB comment was just a peripheral issue, but germane because 20.1 forced the TB upgrade.

It's only germane because of TB,not Mint or any other distro. Personally I think the only competition in Linux TB has for being overrated is VLC.