Mint 21 Upgrade - How did it go?

[all41]

She knows how to use it, and I made it look like her Windows PC

She's becoming aware.
ms will eventually alienate and Mint will be a breath of fresh air.
Windows is claustrophobic


thumbs up @rambo919

[AZgl1800]

My sister's hubby must be going senile,
he just cannot keep from opening up multiple browser windows, while trying to log into his Credit Union

Even after the CU has reset his password to '1234' and TOLD him, you must reset your password, or you will be locked out

does he?
nope....

I deleted Edge, and told him under no certain terms are you to ever use Chrome again on any financial website.

showed him Firefox, and installed "Classic Shell" so it looks like his old Win7 PC that he managed to destroy with missteps...

I really do think, that I need to put him on MINT for his own protection...

[antikythera]

I really do think, that I need to put him on MINT for his own protection...

It wouldn't help, he'd still find a way to screw it up.

My Father who is in his 70s does the same with his computer and has always been the same, even 25 years ago when he was still working. Some folk just have to be near a PC to screw it up

[rambo919]

I really do think, that I need to put him on MINT for his own protection...

Hopefully the bank wont again insist on some braindead bloat "security" windows only runtime in the future then.

[AZgl1800]

I really do think, that I need to put him on MINT for his own protection...

Hopefully the bank wont again insist on some braindead bloat "security" windows only runtime in the future then.

My Credit Union has not done that,
there was a short time a year or so ago that I was having a lot of trouble using Firefox with LM20.3 Cinnamon.
I contacted Customer Support and they elevated the report to their IT support group.

a day or two later, all was well again, never had another issue with it working my Mint installs.

[RollyShed]

My Father who is in his 70s does the same with his computer ...

Yes, some kids never grow up. Us adults, the ones a decade or more older have to keep things going.
Another two installations out last week. I think the kids (must be getting near 70) who got them will actually know enough to run them.

And yes, both Mint 21 installations on to SSDs and the data off the Windows disks copied across. The Windows disks to go on their shelf as back-ups.

[mbott001]

I've only encountered 1 issue with a new LM21 install on a ASUS TUF Gaming laptop and that is video driver related. Driver manager provides 3 Nvidia drivers (nvidia-driver-470, -510 & -515). Only the -470 driver won't throw the system into an "out of memory" error followed by a kernel panic. But everything else I'm asking it to do has been good.

This laptop replaced another ASUS laptop that I've run Linux Mint Cinnamon on for close to 5 years without issue.

--
Mike

[MurphCID]

I really do think, that I need to put him on MINT for his own protection...

It wouldn't help, he'd still find a way to screw it up.

My Father who is in his 70s does the same with his computer and has always been the same, even 25 years ago when he was still working. Some folk just have to be near a PC to screw it up

That is my wife! And much of the time my youngest daughter until she got the Macbook. My stepmother can blow up a computer like no one has ever seen before!

[AZgl1800]

I've only encountered 1 issue with a new LM21 install on a ASUS TUF Gaming laptop and that is video driver related. Driver manager provides 3 Nvidia drivers (nvidia-driver-470, -510 & -515). Only the -470 driver won't throw the system into an "out of memory" error followed by a kernel panic. But everything else I'm asking it to do has been good.

This laptop replaced another ASUS laptop that I've run Linux Mint Cinnamon on for close to 5 years without issue.

--
Mike

this ASUS TUF FX705GM does not like the Nvidia drivers available.
I have gone back to the Intel video driver and it works just fine, no speed performance slow down for me... at least that is noticeable for normal web surfing.

I never run video speed tests, to me they are irrelevant, as my eyes cannot detect the difference.

[billyswong]

I have a multi-operating system desktop set up.
......
This experience was worse than ransomware or other serious malicious attacks.

Still have older versions of Mint 19 on a couple of older machines with only 2GB of RAM that work well. So far as Mint 21, once bitten twice shy.

Maybe there should be some big red flag warning to any people who do multi-boot in the same drive, "WARNING: Such configuration are less tested (or out-right untested) so any automated upgrade may break and you are on your own."

I do not understand what is going on here. After the upgrade on-line did not work I used a thumb drive with Live version of 21 and that does not work.
Goes through the start up with the LM logo and then starts a few lines of read out and then freezes then a final line appears that reads like this
[ 0.392044] x86/cpu: (outside TXT) disabled by BIOS
That is it, freezes at this point with nothing. There is no possible way to install 21 on this computer, yet before the upgrade 20.3 worked very good.
Again, cannot go back to 20.3 since the thumb drive I used to originally install with live version is acting really strange, I can get a live operating system yet the programs will not open that are on the thumb drive. This worked fine when I originally installed the 20.3 version last year.

Your situation sounds strange when you said the LM21 live-usb fail to boot into your PC while the LM20.3 cannot open program after booting into. Maybe at some point your Fedora or whatever added some mysterious setting into the BIOS that restricted what OSes it can boot into. Let take a look in there and disable stupid things such as SecureBoot, or give it a reset.

[rambo919]

OK I must shamefully admit I seem to have found the cause of my constant filesystem corruption issues and Linux seems to be completely innocent.

I had been running ESET linux AV on the problem machine which I now learned had been completely (and annoyingly quietly, I guess the project was a total failure) discontinued last year..... today I uninstalled the apparently hot garbage and had not had a problem since, doing the upgrade to LM 21 now. Even more annoying is they give full Mac support... all I actually want is a damn personal firewall with dynamic prompts.

Now the only real problem I seem to have left (and none of this removes the gripes I have about how normie users will still struggle) is to shift certain apps from ppa's to flatpaks.... which I don't wanna do but seem to have to.

[Pjotr]

shift certain apps from ppa's to flatpaks.... which I don't wanna do but seem to have to.

Why?

And what about the apps in the normal repos? I recommend to try those first.
Probeer is die beste geweer (nooit geschoten is altijd mis).

[rambo919]

shift certain apps from ppa's to flatpaks.... which I don't wanna do but seem to have to.

Why?

And what about the apps in the normal repos? I recommend to try those first.
Probeer is die beste geweer (nooit geschoten is altijd mis).

Mostly the why is devs not keeping up with ubuntu releases and not keeping their ppa's up to date..... or not even having ppa's anymore because flatpak is so much more convenient for them.

As for why the ppa or flatpak some packages are not in the repos to begin with and others are chronically outdated.

Flatpak is my last resort.

[Pjotr]

others are chronically outdated.

In most cases, older versions are perfectly fine for the jobs people want to do with them. As long as they receive security updates and get the job done, there's no need for newer versions...

[rambo919]

others are chronically outdated.

In most cases, older versions are perfectly fine for the jobs people want to do with them. As long as they receive security updates and get the job done, there's no need for newer versions...

Which is why I don't bother in most cases.

For everything else.... there is ppa & flatpak I kinda miss those stupid ad's. Flatpak of course is useless for apps that can't function sandboxed like FreeFileSync (which REALLY needs to be kept updated given all the bugfixes it constantly gets).

And then there is the handful of so obscure apps you only get them on sourceforge and github..... those are really annoying.

At least all in all Linux has a lot less problems here than Windows.... though for that there's patchmypc which solves most irritations.

[FenderGuy]

I couldn't bear not having the latest and greatest Mint OS, so I installed Mint 21 (Cinnamon) on my laptop, with all my standard "tweaks", late last night.

Amazingly (to me), the transition was easy - and more importantly, uneventful, AFAIK; however, in typical "belt and suspenders" fashion, I DID make Rescuezilla backups of both installs (LM 20.3 and LM 21), and separately, the My Documents folder.

So, let the testing begin!

[rossdv8]

Two weeks in since upgrading using the Mint Upgrade Tool and my main observations are that despite all the warnings about odd software repos and stuff, I have still not needed to reinstall much at all.
I had to do a reinstall of my Brother Printers - but that was just a case of running the Brother Install Tool (script) again.
Nearly everything else just works.
A few odd things like:
Cura Slicer (for my 3D printer) has lost the ability to run some of its plugins. Even using the very latest version still can't run some plugins that worked under Mint 20.3. Not a Mint problem - just something changed and Cura hasn't caught up yet.
FreeOffice Textmaker had to be reinstalled - but that was expected because it is proprietary.
KDE Ksysguard no longer works, and the repo to get the version that will work with Mint 21 cannot be installed because of the change to 'signing keys' for PPAs.
- Again, that's NOT a Mint problem. All Ubuntu based distributions are moving away from /etc/apt/sources.list for storing keys.
I had cured GoogleEarth's repo error message, but that has raised its head again - also because of the change to the way signing keys are atored.

ALL my tweaks and decorations were picked up except for one set of icons that I rarely use anyway.

One thing I have noticed, and it is probably the only thing that really does annoy me. Because I often have up to 8 or ten external hard drives and SSDs connected at any given time (2 x 5-bay USB drive racks) I only have two USB 3 ports free on the face of the computer for quick swapping MicroSD cards that I have to write to and swap out sometimes a few times in an hour.
Mint 20.3 would always show a new microSD in the File Managers whenever they were plugged in. It didn;t mount them - 'Places' just showed they were there waiting. When I clicked on them they mounted and opened.
In Mint 21, I insert a microSD card, and - nothing. If I close the File Manager (whichever one I am using - they all do this) then open it again, it shows the microSD card. Same goes for any drive plugged in while a File Manager is open. No drive shows until the File Manager is closed and opened again.

It is not something that would turn me OFF Mint, but it is odd that it worked in Mint 20.3 and doesn't work in Mint 21.
It is probably NOT happening to other people because I doubt many would have so many drives permanently connected. I can live with it, but it IS noticeable mainly because it is one of the ONLY things wrong.

Other than that - boot times are faster. Everything seems to run smooooothly. Some programs that seemed to take too long to open in Mint 20.3 are open almost as soon as I release the mouse button. Ok, slight exaggeration - but load times for many Apps have definitely improved for some reason.

[Venus Flytrap]

rossdv8 -- Does your system use a SSD or a HDD for the OS? I just wonder if your faster boot-up times are due to less file fragmentation since installing the upgraded Mint 21 and related software (if on a HDD)...

[jimbobs]

Upgraded my Dell Inspiron 1525 using the upgrade tool. It was effortless and rebooted properly. The only change I had to make manually was to some of the touch-pad settings (I think others have mentioned that as well). After the upgrade, everything appears to run a little faster especially Brave browser and Libre Office.

EDIT: later noticed my printer settings had also disappeared.

[MurphCID]

The sage of the Darter Pro continues. I installed LMDE 5 and after a reboot it kept telling me there was NO BOOT DEVICE found. I re-installed it, twice, and same issue. So I put POP!_OS back on it and it works fine. So it has to be a System 76 and Coreboot issue. I was not able to run Mint 21 since the Thunderbolt ports were disabled. So it looks like this laptop will keep POP!_OS for a while. This is odd since LMDE 5 went on the old Darter Pro perfectly.