New Upgrade tool absolutely unusable.
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New Upgrade tool absolutely unusable.
I'm deeply disappointed with the new upgrade tool. I've been with Linux Mint for the last five years or so, after switching from Ubuntu, and have been through several upgrade processes, but this is the worst, most frustrating and most completely broken I've seen. I have no option but to reinstall from scratch, and at this point, I'm probably thinking I'll try a different distro.
First of all, timeshift. There are many reasons why people don't want to use it. I have backups of my own, which I make with restic, so don't force me to use it. I did find that it can be disabled by using the three bar menu at the top of the mintupgrade tool. But I had to hunt for that for half an hour. Tell us where it is, or make it a simple checkbox.
So then it scanned through my repos. It flagged three which it didn't like. It gave me the choice of Fix, or Check again. It wasn't clear if I had to manually comment them out or whether the tool would do something to them. Again. Tell us what you're expecting and what the upgrader is doing.
It then found three more it didn't like. This time it popped up the software manager and seemed to be telling me it didn't like my Mint repo choices. I picked some others. It tried to update, and then told me "Your apt policy is incorrect. Reboot". What is going on?
On rebooting it was unable to download all the files and wouldn't upgrade at all. I'm guessing some repos don't have the updated files. I manually returned them to how they were before with the main US repo. While I was there I manually commented out some third party apt lists and ran mintupgrade again.
This time it accepted my apt settings. But now it came across foreign packages it didn't like. Maybe 50 of them, including thunderbird, keepass, and what seemed to be my x system. But it didn't tell me this in a list I could cut and paste, it told me this in a scrolling window 10 lines high which the only way I could make a record of it is to screenshot it 5 times. It seemed that it was going to uninstall all these apps, so at this point I shut it down. I'm not going to upgrade. I'm going to wipe the disk and install from scratch. That was a massive waste of time and a negative improvement from all previous upgrades.
First of all, timeshift. There are many reasons why people don't want to use it. I have backups of my own, which I make with restic, so don't force me to use it. I did find that it can be disabled by using the three bar menu at the top of the mintupgrade tool. But I had to hunt for that for half an hour. Tell us where it is, or make it a simple checkbox.
So then it scanned through my repos. It flagged three which it didn't like. It gave me the choice of Fix, or Check again. It wasn't clear if I had to manually comment them out or whether the tool would do something to them. Again. Tell us what you're expecting and what the upgrader is doing.
It then found three more it didn't like. This time it popped up the software manager and seemed to be telling me it didn't like my Mint repo choices. I picked some others. It tried to update, and then told me "Your apt policy is incorrect. Reboot". What is going on?
On rebooting it was unable to download all the files and wouldn't upgrade at all. I'm guessing some repos don't have the updated files. I manually returned them to how they were before with the main US repo. While I was there I manually commented out some third party apt lists and ran mintupgrade again.
This time it accepted my apt settings. But now it came across foreign packages it didn't like. Maybe 50 of them, including thunderbird, keepass, and what seemed to be my x system. But it didn't tell me this in a list I could cut and paste, it told me this in a scrolling window 10 lines high which the only way I could make a record of it is to screenshot it 5 times. It seemed that it was going to uninstall all these apps, so at this point I shut it down. I'm not going to upgrade. I'm going to wipe the disk and install from scratch. That was a massive waste of time and a negative improvement from all previous upgrades.
Last edited by LockBot on Mon Feb 06, 2023 11:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Re: New Upgrade tool absolutely unusable.
You posted this in the main edition support forum but the new upgrade tool is only available for LMDE 4 > 5 upgrade. Just to clarify, you are talking about LMDE upgrade or did you use the tool to upgrade Linux Mint 20.3 > 21 before it was made ready for that?
Re: New Upgrade tool absolutely unusable.
I'm using regular Mint Mate 20.3. I ran 'apt install mintupgrade' and it installed. So I presumed it was ready, as when I tried that last week it didn't work.
Re: New Upgrade tool absolutely unusable.
The announcement about it is expected tomorrow. It will be on https://blog.linuxmint.com/ (and linked here in the releases & announcements forum).
I wasn't involved with mintupgrade testing for this release, only for LMDE 4>5. I don't know what to expect from the announcement but it may have extra information or instructions.
I wasn't involved with mintupgrade testing for this release, only for LMDE 4>5. I don't know what to expect from the announcement but it may have extra information or instructions.
Re: New Upgrade tool absolutely unusable.
it would also be worth noting,
that any upgrade may, initially, could be only for those currently on LM20.3,
& that they can upgrade to LM21.0
+
if you are on an slightly older version of the LM20.x series
( like this Laptop, currently is )
then that upgrade cycle, may not yet be available.
that any upgrade may, initially, could be only for those currently on LM20.3,
& that they can upgrade to LM21.0
+
if you are on an slightly older version of the LM20.x series
( like this Laptop, currently is )
then that upgrade cycle, may not yet be available.
Please edit your original post title to include [SOLVED] - when your problem is solved!
and DO LOOK at those Unanswered Topics - - you may be able to answer some!.
Re: New Upgrade tool absolutely unusable.
The OP has LM 20.3, so this is not the problem. The problem is (besides the not yet existing announcement information), the only existing problem description in the last post is "didn't work". This has no meaning.
Re: New Upgrade tool absolutely unusable.
If your issue is solved, kindly indicate that by editing the first post in the topic, and adding [SOLVED] to the title. Thanks!
Re: New Upgrade tool absolutely unusable.
For me Timeshift is in the Software Manager. Uninstall it and it can't run.First of all, timeshift. There are many reasons why people don't want to use it. I have backups of my own, which I make with restic, so don't force me to use it. I did find that it can be disabled by using the three bar menu at the top of the mintupgrade tool. But I had to hunt for that for half an hour. Tell us where it is, or make it a simple checkbox.
When I last installed TS it was not installed by default. Now it is, and I think it should be.
Is it also turned on and enabled automatically? I think so, but I'm not sure. Also not sure if it should, but probably not.
Re: New Upgrade tool absolutely unusable.
This is a bit of a non-discussion... if he thinks it's unusable, than he can choose not to use it, and perform the transfer to 21.0 himself.
Re: New Upgrade tool absolutely unusable.
Should people still be posting their test results of mintupgrade, not for the purposes of complaint, but to help contribute and get bugs fixed? I've personally run into multiple instances of mintupgrade crashing on me while upgrading a test machine in the last two days. I can create a separate thread with more details (the latest test I ran got to the final stage before crashing, but it boots and seems to work, at least).
Re: New Upgrade tool absolutely unusable.
Nothing to say against it. But with 2 but:
#1 Something like "doesn't work" helps nobody to understand the problem.
#2 The devs do usually not read here. The proper place would be https://github.com/linuxmint/mintupgrade/issues
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Re: New Upgrade tool absolutely unusable.
Giving my 2 cents about this topic...
It worked for me as a power user but this is something I wouldn't recommend to any normal user, too complex and with too many points of failure to throw someone under this bus.
I have several computers and several installations, and at least 2 machines will not be upgraded. Not risking it!
The Timeshift essays have already been written, so I'll just say that I personally don't use it and have my backups done with fsarchiver.
I've managed to upgrade one machine but between tests and runs I had to do it 3 times.
Luckily I know some workarounds and I saved all the .deb files before the installation deleted them, my internet is slow and this saved me some time, and now I have the files for if and when I decide to upgrade some of my other machines.
Some of my orphan applications I told to keep were kept, others insisted in showing up on the to delete list and were deleted regardless.
I know upgrades are very complex and can break a lot of things.
I have no idea if Ubuntu upgrades are smoother, but this is not Ubuntu and upgrades have to cater in to Mint's own quirks an specificities.
Lots of things broke on my upgrade. Unetbootin is no longer on the repos, got deleted. Telegram stopped starting up and started working again out of the blue... PeerGuardian stopped working and could only start up again, for what I've noticed, when I was offline, weird! I use it to update its blocklists and feed them into Deluge cause sometimes I'm a cheap Portuguese sailor on these digital oceans.
Old dependencies are not available anymore, Linux in general is awful for backwards compatibility...
grub-update broke and I couldn't install a new kernel not apply some GRUB modifications... Fixed. Ended up being some Ubuntu problem down the drain to us with the solution being upstream on the Debian repos...
Now I have a few annoying visual glitches, root applications disregarding my dark theme, etc.
It's been 2 days fixing things here and there, and asking for help here. Lets see how things go before I decide if I'll cut my losses and restore my 20.3 backups, stay the way I am with glitchy Mint 21, nuke & pave from scratch, and what I'll do on my other machines.
Not bashing on the Mint Team. Dealing with OS upgrades is harder than I can imagine and I know the Team does its best, no doubt here!
Also, Linux Mint is free, I don't pay for it, so even if things aren't perfect I feel I have no right to come here and have the entitlement to bash hard working people on a very complex project.
The Community is good, I've been helped and taught a lot, and I contribute whenever I can.
And I feel I'm listened to as part of the Community, even by Clem, as my suggestions were taken under consideration. I found a memory leak in Caja years ago and reported it to Clem by email, he took it, passed it on and reported back in transparency. When I was a Microsoft boy paying thousands for their training, no one listened to a word I said and bugs kept on being bugs and now I just don't care about Microsoft, not even professionally.
Once I wrote a comment on a blog post with a suggestion for the Upgrade Tool to check for held packages, I had them on one installation and upgrading it botched Cinnamon. My fault! And Clem took that suggestion and made it to the Upgrade Tool. Even not being great, I know it is a little bit better on a critical part due to one simple suggestion from me. So I know it could be even worse!
I am not a coder, and Github gets me lost on it's confuse interface, even for every once in a while I have to go there just to download some installation file. It gives me the cringes! So I respectfully declined when Clem asked me asked me to create a Github account. I know it gives little in quantity but excellent in quality for bug reporting. But I think there should be a way on this Forum, for example, for people not so experienced to report bugs and then someone passes them to Github.
I would have lots of constructive suggestions to improve this Upgrade Tool, but this way I can't reach them, and we all lose...
So even if this upgrade process comes out to be awful and I skip the Mint 21 series entirely, I won't abandon Mint and sooner or later I'll bite the bullet and reinstall a new version from scratch, like I did from LMDE2 to Mint 20. A lot of work but didn't regret it. And that's how it goes, when your system is perfectly adjusted to you, it becomes obsolete...
But well, either way and even with all this, long live Mint and long live everyone in this awesome community! Cheers!!
It worked for me as a power user but this is something I wouldn't recommend to any normal user, too complex and with too many points of failure to throw someone under this bus.
I have several computers and several installations, and at least 2 machines will not be upgraded. Not risking it!
The Timeshift essays have already been written, so I'll just say that I personally don't use it and have my backups done with fsarchiver.
I've managed to upgrade one machine but between tests and runs I had to do it 3 times.
Luckily I know some workarounds and I saved all the .deb files before the installation deleted them, my internet is slow and this saved me some time, and now I have the files for if and when I decide to upgrade some of my other machines.
Some of my orphan applications I told to keep were kept, others insisted in showing up on the to delete list and were deleted regardless.
I know upgrades are very complex and can break a lot of things.
I have no idea if Ubuntu upgrades are smoother, but this is not Ubuntu and upgrades have to cater in to Mint's own quirks an specificities.
Lots of things broke on my upgrade. Unetbootin is no longer on the repos, got deleted. Telegram stopped starting up and started working again out of the blue... PeerGuardian stopped working and could only start up again, for what I've noticed, when I was offline, weird! I use it to update its blocklists and feed them into Deluge cause sometimes I'm a cheap Portuguese sailor on these digital oceans.
Old dependencies are not available anymore, Linux in general is awful for backwards compatibility...
grub-update broke and I couldn't install a new kernel not apply some GRUB modifications... Fixed. Ended up being some Ubuntu problem down the drain to us with the solution being upstream on the Debian repos...
Now I have a few annoying visual glitches, root applications disregarding my dark theme, etc.
It's been 2 days fixing things here and there, and asking for help here. Lets see how things go before I decide if I'll cut my losses and restore my 20.3 backups, stay the way I am with glitchy Mint 21, nuke & pave from scratch, and what I'll do on my other machines.
Not bashing on the Mint Team. Dealing with OS upgrades is harder than I can imagine and I know the Team does its best, no doubt here!
Also, Linux Mint is free, I don't pay for it, so even if things aren't perfect I feel I have no right to come here and have the entitlement to bash hard working people on a very complex project.
The Community is good, I've been helped and taught a lot, and I contribute whenever I can.
And I feel I'm listened to as part of the Community, even by Clem, as my suggestions were taken under consideration. I found a memory leak in Caja years ago and reported it to Clem by email, he took it, passed it on and reported back in transparency. When I was a Microsoft boy paying thousands for their training, no one listened to a word I said and bugs kept on being bugs and now I just don't care about Microsoft, not even professionally.
Once I wrote a comment on a blog post with a suggestion for the Upgrade Tool to check for held packages, I had them on one installation and upgrading it botched Cinnamon. My fault! And Clem took that suggestion and made it to the Upgrade Tool. Even not being great, I know it is a little bit better on a critical part due to one simple suggestion from me. So I know it could be even worse!
I am not a coder, and Github gets me lost on it's confuse interface, even for every once in a while I have to go there just to download some installation file. It gives me the cringes! So I respectfully declined when Clem asked me asked me to create a Github account. I know it gives little in quantity but excellent in quality for bug reporting. But I think there should be a way on this Forum, for example, for people not so experienced to report bugs and then someone passes them to Github.
I would have lots of constructive suggestions to improve this Upgrade Tool, but this way I can't reach them, and we all lose...
So even if this upgrade process comes out to be awful and I skip the Mint 21 series entirely, I won't abandon Mint and sooner or later I'll bite the bullet and reinstall a new version from scratch, like I did from LMDE2 to Mint 20. A lot of work but didn't regret it. And that's how it goes, when your system is perfectly adjusted to you, it becomes obsolete...
But well, either way and even with all this, long live Mint and long live everyone in this awesome community! Cheers!!
Bye for now,
Bruno
(Always backup before you screw up :)
Bruno
(Always backup before you screw up :)
Re: New Upgrade tool absolutely unusable.
You don't need to be a coder for creating a Github account.BrunoMiranda wrote: ⤴Wed Aug 10, 2022 1:02 am I am not a coder, ... So I respectfully declined when Clem asked me asked me to create a Github account.
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Re: New Upgrade tool absolutely unusable.
I know that. What I meant if that I get lost in that interface alone just to download some file and it would be a steep learning curve just to, in practice, "write text". That's why I love ol' email.Cosmo. wrote: ⤴Wed Aug 10, 2022 2:50 amYou don't need to be a coder for creating a Github account.BrunoMiranda wrote: ⤴Wed Aug 10, 2022 1:02 am I am not a coder, ... So I respectfully declined when Clem asked me asked me to create a Github account.
By the way, just asking... Is there any tutorial on how to navigate on Github to report a bug and make it as simple and practical as possible for people who don't want to invest on the hard way to learn how to use Github for bug reporting?
Bye for now,
Bruno
(Always backup before you screw up :)
Bruno
(Always backup before you screw up :)
Re: New Upgrade tool absolutely unusable.
Create account, go to relevant project, go to the Issue tab, click the New issue button. Give it a descriptive title and provide information in the text area. Apply relevant label. Some projects use a pre-filled template for issues, providing you with questions to answer in the text area. Take a look at closed issues for how others are reporting issues for the project.BrunoMiranda wrote: ⤴Wed Aug 10, 2022 3:00 am Is there any tutorial on how to navigate on Github to report a bug and make it as simple and practical as possible for people who don't want to invest on the hard way to learn how to use Github for bug reporting?
Before you report a bug read https://linuxmint-troubleshooting-guide.readthedocs.io/. Half baked bug reports don't do anybody good; wastes your time and the developers' time. Have you found the responsible component and are you reporting it on the right project, do you have steps to reproduce it, can you or somebody else reproduce it on another system, which OS + release are you using and what version of the software? If it's not 100% reproducible on another system, or you're not 100% sure of which component is responsible, it's probably better to start troubleshooting on the forums to get input from others.
Re: New Upgrade tool absolutely unusable.
After some practice you will find your way there. Without practice you will get lost also in a year or so.BrunoMiranda wrote: ⤴Wed Aug 10, 2022 3:00 am What I meant if that I get lost in that interface alone just to download some file and it would be a steep learning curve just to, in practice, "write text".
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Re: New Upgrade tool absolutely unusable.
Is there any video tutorial on an introductory walk-through on reporting bugs in Github? It would be really nice if someone made a welcome and show me around tour. And also as a self review mechanism if I get lost somewhere on the way because I haven't been doing it for some time and can easily check back the video and avoid frustration and jumping ship. That would be a win-win for the whole Community!
I can't find Github intuitive and straight forward even for downloading some single installation file when I occasionally need to and I personally feel discouraged for even trying as I already have more than enough things to juggle competing for my time and attention... And that's a lose-lose!
A video tutorial would be a plus for the whole project and a step forward in leading by example for the whole Community running several distros and a good marketing piece that would bring Linux Mint to the news again.
I can't find Github intuitive and straight forward even for downloading some single installation file when I occasionally need to and I personally feel discouraged for even trying as I already have more than enough things to juggle competing for my time and attention... And that's a lose-lose!
A video tutorial would be a plus for the whole project and a step forward in leading by example for the whole Community running several distros and a good marketing piece that would bring Linux Mint to the news again.
Bye for now,
Bruno
(Always backup before you screw up :)
Bruno
(Always backup before you screw up :)
Re: New Upgrade tool absolutely unusable.
Forget videos. This is not entertainment. You cannot tell after a video, where exactly what has been said, in contrast to a written advice. You can hardly go back and forth, as you can do wit a written document. You cannot mark anything, if you find it especially important.