wisdom of updating?

[biffer]

Hi,

I use Mint Maya 13 from July 12. Two days ago I thought i ought to update it and this gave me a world of problems. Lost my printer: lost my email connection: had problems booting. I've now re-installed from my original disc and all seems well.

So, should I bother about updating? Should I download the latest version and cut a new dvd disc?

Any advice would be appreciated.

[wayne128]

Hi,

I use Mint Maya 13 from July 12. Two days ago I thought i ought to update it and this gave me a world of problems. Lost my printer: lost my email connection: had problems booting. I've now re-installed from my original disc and all seems well.

So, should I bother about updating? Should I download the latest version and cut a new dvd disc?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Should you bother about updating?
Seriously, only you can decide.

If you found a distros that you like, keep it and stay with it until it is EOL.

But if you are swayed somehow, or your heart keep telling you about running the 'latest and greatest updated version', then in order to satisfy BOTH stability (old, dated, solid, working) and new ( unknown, many 'nice features' , read many reviews saying you must have it, etc), what you can do is, dual boot!
As long as you have some extra 10G of hard disk space, just give 10G to the 'new distros, new revision' and test run while KEEPING old, stable distros intact. Then you can enjoy both old stable and play with the new unknown.

One thing I learned, after trashing countless times, is a way to backup ( with short time, and restore in very short time.)
Nowadays, I keep a number of working distros, using qt4-fsarchiver.
When I am in the mood to play with a new release, I do it anyway, if it does not turn out, it will be just 5-10 minutes to restore the old working distros. Similarly, if I have old stable, and I wish to do a big upgrade, I backup, then do it anyway, if it is trashed beyong my ability to rescue , all I need is another 5-10 minutes of restore and I would return to old working distros..

[eanfrid]

Whatever the distro, you must update... unless you can live on with existing bugs and your computer will never be connected to the Internet (or to other machines).

On a LTS, it will typically install fixes (for bugs and security issues) that were released since the original install media came out (more than 1 year ago regarding LM13).

Unfortunately, maybe you installed something not coming from the official repos or a proprietary driver. Such a big update should be made before installing unofficial/proprietary software since those are very prone to break afterwards.

Edit: I am only talking about LM13 updates, including backports. If you meant "updating" to LM14 or LM15, this is not "updating". Upgrading from LM13 to a newer realease, would be like switching from any Windows version to another: things can be better but many can go wrong.

[Pierre]

Nowadays, I keep a number of working distros, using qt4-fsarchiver.
When I am in the mood to play with a new release, I do it anyway, if it does not turn out, it will be just 5-10 minutes to restore the old working distros.

would you be able to elaborate on that?.

[passerby]

Hi,

I use Mint Maya 13 from July 12. Two days ago I thought i ought to update it and this gave me a world of problems. Lost my printer: lost my email connection: had problems booting. I've now re-installed from my original disc and all seems well.

So, should I bother about updating? Should I download the latest version and cut a new dvd disc?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Are you talking about updating Mint 13 to 14/15, or installing the updates Mint 13 provides?
If you were upgrading to Mint 14+, then no, I'd say stick with 13.
If you encountered problems installing Mint 13 updates, then consider setting Mint to only install security updates and leave applications where they are.

[wayne128]

Nowadays, I keep a number of working distros, using qt4-fsarchiver.
When I am in the mood to play with a new release, I do it anyway, if it does not turn out, it will be just 5-10 minutes to restore the old working distros.

would you be able to elaborate on that?.

Pierre,
Sure can.
I used to use gparted to clone OS partition. Similar to Clonezilla but a lot less process. Simply copy from partition OS and paste to unallocated space on another hard disk or external hard disk.

The issue I find not nice is, I have to have the same or larger size partition to clone OS.
so I need to use a lot of hard disk space to house the clones.

I switched to using QT4-fsarchiver for around half a year with 100% success.
It is better in a few ways :

1. it allows me to clone a partition , keep it as a file, which I can assign a fancy name so that i can track and understand... haha, if you have one to five it is OK, but I have 20-50 I will be lost very soon on which is which.. sort of poor management of archived files.

I keep them in a data partition in ntfs format.
When I treasured certain distros, I would copy it and save on external hard disk.

See a few of these files I backup with long name to remind me what and when I did the backup.

Code: Select all

netrunner1306beta-21-5-2013.fsa
debian64rc1fglrx-28-2-2013.fsa
pardusmatekdetrygrublegacy-27-5-2013.fsa
pclosminime-20-3-2013.fsa
stella64-7-7-2013.fsa

2. it compresses with some scheme so I could squeeze a large partition OS to a small file, that makes lot of sense for my multiboot play.
So I can have a running 23G size OS partition, which used up 5.7G and backup as a file of size 2.11G, see below text for example.

Code: Select all

Backup file name: netrunner1306-7-7-2013.fsa
Partition  name: sda13
Partition type: ext4
UUID: 7802725d-212b-4be4-9acb-aaa54565a124
Description: <unknown>
Partition size: 23,11 GB
Assignment of the partition: 5,71 GB
Assignment of the partition: 26 %
Compression: gzip standard
Approximate image file sizes: 2,11 GB



Other notes: 

3. It can restore to another partition, or a partition of smaller size, even another file system!! from above I have netrunner in a 23G partition, backup to only 2.1G
when i restore I can choose any other partition size something like 8-10G instead of the original partition size of 23G.

4. time saved! restoring is very fast!.

5. There are a few good tutorials by ukbrian on youtube,
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDMQtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DoSKjGbLbflU&ei=ifjbUZ-hEIaCrgfP8IBw&usg=AFQjCNGPfaREeBmhFrUmIWSp2YzGBzxyTQ&sig2=pSmmIYit8og9_BxiltwDsw&bvm=bv.48705608,d.bmk

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&ved=0CDoQtwIwAQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DFrhREJP9WzQ&ei=ifjbUZ-hEIaCrgfP8IBw&usg=AFQjCNHIwqJDYQnmnaO98D-QVdNwN9d57w&sig2=kyk1BbOw2OtmsFJYPXIFOg&bvm=bv.48705608,d.bmk


and viking777 had created a thread also.
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=124636


some older tutorial by Gerd50
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=197&t=89189


6. Note also that qt4-fsarchiver is also available in some latest partedmagic iso, I used feb2013 revision for a while with 100% success rate in restoring from archives.

In order to use less process, what i do is, I frugal install partedmagic ( by using unetbootin running on HDD instead of the usual running on USB, this will frugal install for me).
So, I do not use CD, when I want to run QT4-archiver, I reboot computer, from grub menu select the unetbootin or partedmagic, and then click my way to backup or restore.
Save me lots of time and running from frugal HDD is very fast too.

hope this helps

[Dyfi]

One of the best things about PartedMagic is that the .iso will boot.

Grub-imageboot is required via Synaptic. Place the .iso in "Images" folder in boot (you will have to create Images folder) - update grub, and a new entry will be added to the grub menu. The .iso will then boot and run in RAM thus avoiding live CD or USB.