Updating to Newer Versions of Mint....

[eagleshadow]

This may be the totally wrong place to place this, but I was wondering how many users keep a version that they really like.
I ask this because I've been running 17.3 KDE for a very long time, and I've tried the 'new' KDE 18, Cinnamon, and even Xfce.
None of them really seem to have that many great features that make me want to "upgrade".
I realize the developers do a lot of work, and work hard on the new versions, and my hat is off to them, but right now, I have
KDE 18 and my original KDE 17.3, and I'm beginning to not see that many advantages or features in 18 that makes it worth the
switch over long-term.
'Just wondering if others stick with a version they've used and like, or if the trend is to always go with the newer versions.
Thanks.

[Reorx]

I'm still using LM17 on my production machines!

[trytip]

i'm staying with 17.3, too bad it's based on the ubuntu 14.04 which will end in 2019. maybe mint 18.3 will be worth investing in. if your machine is working correct and you have a LOT of PPA installed i would NOT advise into upgrading because you will break it

[jimallyn]

I'm still using Mint 17.3 Cinnamon. But I have installed Mint 18 on several computers for friends. I will probably update my computer to 18 one of these days, but 17 is working good so I'm in no rush.

[Cosmo.]

Upgrade for a reason. If I look at my test installations I don't see the reason to upgrade, but I see many reasons to not upgrade. So my production system runs with LM 17.3.

[Responsive]

For me LM18 is much better than LM17.

[Pjotr]

As long as Mint 17.x still gets security updates (which is until May, 2019) there's of course no need to upgrade.

That said: I upgraded all of my own machines, and most of the other machines that I'm responsible for, to Mint 18. By means of a clean installation, so definitely not by means of a "dirty" in-place upgrade. They all work well.

[TooMuchTime]

Mint 17.3 on this Dell laptop was working fine. But my original partition scheme did not have a separate /home partition. So I just backed up my data, repartitioned the drive with /home (see my system below), and installed Mint 18. I figured if I was going to repartition I may as well move up to Mint 18. Everything is working fine.

My system:
Mint 18 - 64bit Cinnamon, Dell Latitude E6400, Intel P8600, 4GiB Ram, 320GiB HD (Boot-10GiB, Swap-9GiB, Root-25GiB, Home-276GiB)

[eagleshadow]

Thanks for all the knowledgeable and varied replies.
If one thinks about it, April of 2019 is a year + away, and at the rate things seem to be going, I'm sure there will be a better (IMHO) version
of Mint KDE by then.
I kinda' liked Cinnamon 18, but not quite enough to switch over. I did not install the Mate 18, and I've never tried the LMDE, which might be worth a shot,
because that's what I was into for a while before Kubuntu & Mint. I've always liked Debian, and it's one of the older distro's around. 'Gotta' be doing
something right.
But, as many have mentioned, if what I'm running now is doing the job, and doing it well, why fix something that isn't broken.
I guess I'm just a free spirit at time though. I really will check out the LMDE. I honestly hadn't paid much attention to it.
Again, thanks for all the informative replies; that's one thing that makes the forum and Mint the best, or one of the best, depending on one's point
of view. Others are always willing to give someone a hand, regardless of the problem, and it doesn't seem we have much "trolling" on these forums.
I hope to be able to post more, and possible be in a position to help others at some point.
Believe me, I'm played around with OpenBSD, the other BSD's, plus several linux distro's, and I'm hardly an expert at any of them.
When I started out in linux, grub was a simple file that one could edit directly, and so many things were so different.

[Fred Barclay]

I guess I'm just a free spirit at time though. I really will check out the LMDE. I honestly hadn't paid much attention to it.

We few, we happy few, we band of...
okay, got a little carried away there, but we whatever-you-call-LMDE-users would love to have someone else give LMDE a try!

[Jim Hauser]

Linux Mint KDE 17.3 works exceptionally well on my equipment. So does 18. I decided to go with 18 (clean install.) I still keep a couple of 17.3 backup files handy just in case but for me 18 works just fine for the most part on this "newer" equipment.

Cheers!

Jim

[Hoser Rob]

... None of them really seem to have that many great features that make me want to "upgrade"...

You've hit the proverbial nail on the head there. I'll do a point release upgrade for basically 2 reasons:

Because there's a hardware support issue that is solved with a new point release. NEVER assume that'll be true though.

Because there are changes in the DE I use that are compelling enough for me to want to newer one. This reason has a much lower priority.

The DE I use is Xfce and mint 18 uses the same Xfce version, and my hardware is working fine. So I'm holding on to 17.3 until it's EOL.

[DeMus]

Mint 17.3 on this Dell laptop was working fine. But my original partition scheme did not have a separate /home partition. So I just backed up my data, repartitioned the drive with /home (see my system below), and installed Mint 18. I figured if I was going to repartition I may as well move up to Mint 18. Everything is working fine.

My system:
Mint 18 - 64bit Cinnamon, Dell Latitude E6400, Intel P8600, 4GiB Ram, 320GiB HD (Boot-10GiB, Swap-9GiB, Root-25GiB, Home-276GiB)

What do you use your Boot folder for? I see you used 10GB for it. Mine is filled with 68MB of files, that is, if we are talking about the same folder.

[TooMuchTime]

What do you use your Boot folder for? I see you used 10GB for it. Mine is filled with 68MB of files, that is, if we are talking about the same folder.

We are talking about the same thing. I have a separate boot partition so the boot loader can be on the very first part of the hard drive. My understanding is that if the boot loader is not within the first 1024 cylinders on the disk, you may have boot problems. I've read posts on other forums where the user had their boot partition pretty far down on the hard drive and had no end of boot problems. I will admit that my boot partition is probably too big. I tend to over-build my systems until I learn what I really need. I could probably reduce that to 1GB or even 500MB. Mine is currently using 58MB so you can see I do over engineer things!

I don't have a newer system with UEFI so I'm not taking any chances with the boot process. This post pretty much explains the history of the Disk Cylinder/BIOS/Boot limitation. Jump to the Booting is Hard heading.

I need the root for all of the applications and such. Currently there are 16GB free on root. That's not a problem but if I redo the system, I'm going to go with a 500MB boot, 35GB root, 9GB swap, and the remainder on home. I need the swap because it's a laptop and I do hibernate the system on occasion.

It's always a learning process for me and that is a good thing.

[Hoser Rob]

... None of them really seem to have that many great features that make me want to "upgrade"...

Good that you figured this out already ... they rarely do have new features you can't live without. System upgrades often seem to have more to do with hardware support than useful features.

KDE seems to be an exception with mint 18 because of PLasma 5, but everything I've seen here and on the ubuntu support sites suggests that KDE 5 is a bug fest. As was KDE 4 when it was new. So if I was still using KDE I'd still be on 17.3 as well.

[CaptainMintMan]

Hi folks,

Currently I am still on v.13 - because it does what I want, reliably etc.

Now, it becomes end of support early next year so I really should upgrade. But to what? v.17.3 with end of support 2019? Or v.18.x with end of support 2021?

My machines are Toshiba Satellite Pro A200 (Celeron M CPU 520 1.6GHz) & Toshiba Satellite Pro L300 (2 x Pentium Dual CPU T2390 1.8GHz). Old machines I know, but they do what I want so I have no need to upgrade. Software is Firefox, Thunderbird, Libre Office (Writer & Calc only), GIMP (& occasionally Paint Shop Pro v.7 running via WINE), Design CAD v2000 or v17.2 (see below) running via WINE and Masterfile Professional, a DOS database running via DOSemu.

( I use Design Cad 2000 on Mint 13 because it is much more reliable than its updated version 17.2, however, I do know that on Mint 17.1, Design Cad v 17.2 is much improved although this may be due to a later version of WINE.)

I should point out that I use the MATE version of Mint. This was because the User Guide to Mint v.13 recommended MATE! No problems on Mint 13, but I did have a problem on Mint v 17.0 & 17.1 with dual screens and something to do with desktop text colours disappearing. I did find work arounds, but never a complete cure. I believe that later versions of Mint actually use a later version of MATE so maybe the problem has vanished.

So, what would people recommend?

Regards,

CaptainMintMan

[Pjotr]

@CaptainMintMan: 18.x. No reason to select 17.x, unless you have a very old Nvidia video card which needs the nvidia-173 driver, or an old AMD video card which needs the fglrx driver.

For a more in-depth advice, post the inxi -Fxz output for both machines.

[CaptainMintMan]

Hi,

Although "inxi -Fxz" worked, I failed (read don't know how) to copy the output. Anyway, as far as I can tell, the Graphics cards are Intel Mobile 945GM/GMS 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller. Also GLX Rendered: Mesa DRI Intel 945GW GLX Version 1.4 Mesa 8.04 Direct Rendering: Yes

Which does not sound like Nvidia or AMD. Which in turn suggests that Mint 18 should be OK. I've now got at a guess three to four months to try it out and see what happens.

Many thanks,

CaptainMintMan

[MintBean]

I always update early, for a couple of reasons. The Mint team usually comes up with some little Easter egg of at least minor interest with each new release which I want to play with and sometimes the new Ubuntu base brings improvements that may not be listed in the Mint release. Mint 18 brought me screen brightness persistence after power-off and Bluetooth that stays off when turned off, for example. The second reason is that you'll have to upgrade eventually, so may as well 'get her done' as they say.

I can understand those who wait until a release is mature before upgrading, but the lengths some will go to not to upgrade do puzzle me.

[PussyCat]

I'm not "puzzled". With regular updates, I persist with Mint 13 Maya Xfce because of LTS (still another 5 months!). It has multiple DE available - though Xfce, but with Mate menu and Compiz, is still my first choice - and a wealth of added applications so don't relish having to start again until forced to. A couple of recent h/w issues necessitated a kernel upgrade to solve one and the addition of h/w "database" from an even higher kernel to solve the other. But accept, of course, that they are covered ootb in later versions of Mint.

Yet I even keep Mint 8 Helena going and still think it provided the smoothest DE also with Compiz. Interestingly it was easier to patch to accomodate the aforementioned h/w needs!

Importantly (for me), Remastersys works wonderfully for both, allowing easy maintenance, backup and portability between my (too many!) machines.