Mint 21 Upgrade - How did it go?

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rossdv8
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Mint 21 Upgrade - How did it go?

Post by rossdv8 »

I'll start this one with a copy of my reply to the Topic posted by someone suggesting Mint 21 might be the most 'Buggy release ever'.
***************************
A follow-up from my previous reply.

A few replies back I saw a reference to the Mint Upgrade Tool. I'm used to using the message that appears in MintUpdate when it is time to Upgrade. Out of curiosity I checked the Repos and sure enough there 'is' a MintUpgrade Tool in there. So I installed it, just to be ready when the time comes.

I noticed it was not installed, so I installed it, and when I opened it, it offered to upgrade my system from Mint 20.3 to Mint 21.
I'm aware that there's been no announcement yet (At least at the point where I installed the Upgrade tool). I just decided to see what all the bugginess referred to by the OP here was about .

So now the MintUpgrade Tool has completed.
Anyway, I followed ALL the steps and I am in Mint 21 now.
There was ONE spot where I made a mistake. I received a message that a whole heap of software that is NOT IN The Repos would be removed and that I should select the stuff I wanted to keep, using Preferences.

I couldn't find 'Preferences' anywhere, so I clicked 'Next' and it deleted a heap of stuff I would normally have had to reinstall anyway (which is what I am about to do). Most other things seem to be working at this stage. Some things are unhappy just now but I suspect I'll get them sorted with a couple of tweaks.

For example:
It seems to have got rid of my Printer Drives in CUPS and left me only with the Driverless ones. That means I now have to install the Brother LPR drivers form their support site to get all my special settings back.
The upside is that the Driverless option seems to work ok on my Brother MFC-J6520 and also picked up the A3 sized scanner via Xsane :)
It screwed up my Private Internet Access VPN App (Fixed using its Settings and a bit of guesswork)
It got rid of my Cairo-Dock (fixed using Synaptic)
It installed most of Plasma 5, though I'm sure I didn't have quite that much of it. (my fault for using some Plasma/KDE stuff over Xfce for theming)
Upgrade Tool uninstalled my LibreOffice 7.x - but it also uninstalled LibreOffice 6.x, and replaced THAT with LibreOffice 7.3.something - and linked it to the icon and launcher that used to be 6.x. I'm not complaining - just saying. All I have to do is edit the launchers for 6 and change the icons.
Actually quite a bit of the software I saw the Upgrade Tool removing, has been replaced with later releases.

The work the Mint Team has done on the MintUpgrade Tool has been very, very well done. Thanks !!

All in all though Mint 21 Xfce seems to be working nicely so far.

Among the other things that are NOT working properly.

There's some 'lag' when typing things like this post.
The Volume Icon is missing from the Panel (should be easy to fix).
I no longer have Video Wallpaper (should be easy to fix)
I don;t have VNC using NoMachine (Hope that's easy to fix)

Not too buggy at all and I would say so far it is NOT the most buggy release in Mint History. I had some awful problems (probably user issues) with one of the earlier releases, years ago.
The most annoying thing is the slight keyboard lag. Definitely something I didn't have in Mint 20.3 - but not a real drama.

I'm off to start checking other stuff.
____________

U P D A T E
NoMachine is installed and working - VNC is finding and displaying/controlling the other computers currently on the network.
Video Wallpaper is working, so I have a video of an a live aquarium, or any other video displaying as wallpaper - or an animated gif as wallpaper.
(that's one that is totally unnecessary - but I like having, just because I can)
Cairo-Dock is installed and working again

I think the only 'messy' thing I will have to do is manually instal the Brother printer again just because of my special settings.
All my other printers were picked up automatically and can happily operate 'driverless'.

U P D A T E - 2
The official instructions about how to upgrade have been posted here:
https://linuxmint-user-guide.readthedoc ... nt-21.html

I jumped the gun a little and made a couple of silly mistakes that luckily did not impact the upgrade, and at this point the Upgrade seems to have picked up almost ALL my weird modifications to Mint 20.3 Xfce, and just left me with a very few things to reinstall - most of which are done and dusted.
At this point, after testing for a couple of hours, I'd say my Upgrade experience has gone ridiculously easily and it all looks great. After a couple of reboots, even the problem with the lag in typing seems to have resolved itself.

I'm a Happy Little Vegemite (ya probably hafta be an Aussie to get that one . . .) :D

How have your Upgrades gone?
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Feb 08, 2023 11:00 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: Mint 21 Upgrade - How did it go?

Post by Pjotr »

Upgraded two machines by means of a fresh clean installation of 21 over 20.3. Zero problems. 8)
Tip: 10 things to do after installing Linux Mint 21.3 Virginia
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Re: Mint 21 Upgrade - How did it go?

Post by AZgl1800 »

Pjotr wrote: Mon Aug 08, 2022 9:38 am Upgraded two machines by means of a fresh clean installation of 21 over 20.3. Zero problems. 8)
Have not tried the upgrade, I normally do a fresh install like Pjotr, and then I do a Restore of my Aptik backups, which then gives me all of the Apps that are in the Repository, plus a list of those that are not.
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Re: Mint 21 Upgrade - How did it go?

Post by MurphCID »

Pjotr wrote: Mon Aug 08, 2022 9:38 am Upgraded two machines by means of a fresh clean installation of 21 over 20.3. Zero problems. 8)
I have done four, and other than the USB-C/Thunderbolt issue on one laptop, no problems of any kind. And that issue went away after a couple of reboots. Best upgrade yet.
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Linux Mint 21 upgrade process

Post by Foggy »

A) I have just upgraded my laptop from 20.3 to 21, basically without any issues.....my thoughts and comments on the process
1...Over all it worked but the process was very long (it did warn me), I previously upgraded Ubuntu 20.04 to 22.04 much quicker and again without any issues
2..It did highlight my installed Brother printer drivers as orphan packages....it would have been nice if I could have selected the packages and "Clicked" to keep rather than typing in again on another dialog box and get "finger" trouble mistyping the characters
other than that all went well

B) an aged & temperamental iMac - I decided to do a clean fresh install - this (as usual) was very quick and without incident,

I think on balance, as I have pretty well vanilla Mint next time fresh install is the way to go. However if any users have a lot of other packages installed , then maybe Upgrade tool is the way to go, however point A.1 above is even more of an issue
Last edited by SMG on Mon Aug 08, 2022 12:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Moved from Installation & Boot to the existing topic in Chat about Linux Mint on the upgrade issue since this is not a request for help.
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Re: Mint 21 Upgrade - How did it go?

Post by majpooper »

Pjotr wrote: Mon Aug 08, 2022 9:38 am Upgraded two machines by means of a fresh clean installation of 21 over 20.3. Zero problems. 8)
I only upgrade via fresh installs . . . . it's a religious belief for me. Have done several fresh installs of LM21 Cinnamon in a VM environment and one on a Lenovo T400 laptop - all went smoothly.
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Re: Mint 21 Upgrade - How did it go?

Post by rafikiphoto »

My MS Surface Pro 7 has the Linux Surface kernel installed. Try as I might I couldn't find a way to use the Mint upgrade tool in this scenario so I backed up my Home directory and installed Vanessa as a reinstall over 20.3. Restored the data and settings and did necessary updates then reinstalled the Surface kernel. Apart from some tiny wrinkles restoring data and settings all went far smoother than I had expected. Now back to normal with Vanessa and Surface kernal both running well.
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Re: Mint 21 Upgrade - How did it go?

Post by Guilden_NL »

Two days ago I upgraded (not clean install) and it was the fastest, cleanest upgrade I've ever had with Mint and I go back to Bianca 2.2

I used the upgrade tool and it worked perfectly. One issue to resolve after downgrading some packages/apps per the tool's direction and it was related to grub-customizer. All it took was grub update and everything was like it was under 20.3, though much faster.

I will add that I am fortunate to have two blazing fast mirrors and 1gb home data, so the speed compared with some of the other comments was much faster for me. The Asus UX51VZ I have it running on is still a screamer in performance ten years later and that helped as well.
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Re: Mint 21 Upgrade - How did it go?

Post by eu2 »

majpooper wrote: Mon Aug 08, 2022 12:29 pm
Pjotr wrote: Mon Aug 08, 2022 9:38 am Upgraded two machines by means of a fresh clean installation of 21 over 20.3. Zero problems. 8)
I only upgrade via fresh installs . . . . it's a religious belief for me. Have done several fresh installs of LM21 Cinnamon in a VM environment and one on a Lenovo T400 laptop - all went smoothly.
This is the way to avoid issues as it is a lot less hassle and much faster.
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Re: Mint 21 Upgrade - How did it go?

Post by thom_A »

I don't do upgrades, ie, from 20.x to current version. I do clean installs.

I did upgrades in the past, but recently I noticed something, I forgot what it was, but It wasn't a huge issue.

Anyways, I actually install Mint in two partitions. So when the new release comes out, I format one partition and install the current version. I can always boot with the one that is showing stability. Usually both are exactly the same, ie, no perceptible problem. Therefore, I have the new version on one and the previous on the other.
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Re: Linux Mint 21 upgrade process

Post by rossdv8 »

Foggy wrote: Mon Aug 08, 2022 11:14 am 2..It did highlight my installed Brother printer drivers as orphan packages....it would have been nice if I could have selected the packages and "Clicked" to keep rather than typing in again on another dialog box and get "finger" trouble mistyping the characters
other than that all went well . .
That's where I fell over. When it said I could keep the packages I wanted from the huge list - but I couldn't find 'Preferences. I simply didn't see the Hamburger menu (3 tiny linies).
It would be nice if the Mint Team perhaps changed that bit by making a 'Keep Some packages' button and a Don;t Keep Any Packages' button. Something obvious for some of us Old Codgers with dodgy eyesight who have rarely ever used anything with normal styling/theming.

Out of curiosity.
When I found the Hambugger and the Preference menu - I assumed it would be a click and select, or a drag to the right type dialog.
Your reply seems to suggest that we were supposed to type commands into something for each package we wanted to save (My Brother Printer Drivers and about 4 proprietary lumps of coal).
What did the Upgrade Tool actually ask you to do to save them?
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Re: Mint 21 Upgrade - How did it go?

Post by rossdv8 »

Guilden_NL wrote: Mon Aug 08, 2022 2:04 pm . . . I will add that I am fortunate to have two blazing fast mirrors and 1gb home data, so the speed compared with some of the other comments was much faster for me. The Asus UX51VZ I have it running on is still a screamer in performance ten years later and that helped as well.
I have gigglebit Fibre broadband and high speed wireless and ethernet - but my downloads for the upgrade were crawling. LOW killerbits per second.
Disabling my VPN and suddenly everything whizzed by in no time.

I noticed that Mint 21 mesed with my VPN settings - which seems to be what caused the bottleneck. Might be something to warn peoples to check / disable before upgrading ?? although we should already know to disable a VPN before upgrading. It's just that VPN has never seemed to impact my downloads from the mirrors I was using before.

I don't think the upgrade 'changed the settings. I suspect Mint 21 'uses something slightly different, which might be why the setting in PIA's VPN App definitely needed to be changed after the upgrade.
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Re: Mint 21 Upgrade - How did it go?

Post by Aftermath »

I have a multi-operating system desktop set up. This week the Linux 21 became available and I had Linux Mint 20.3 set up as one of the multi-operating systems. Followed the instructions step by step with exception of making a back up since I did not have enough memory anywhere to do such, would have required over 400GB of memory on any internal or external partition. Still have all back ups of my images and documents, and software downloads used for installation.
Had a really good set up with Mint 20.3, Wine worked excellent, never any problems with anything. The only reason I upgrade is to keep up with security updates not to redesign my operating system functions and features. After upgrading my computer became really slow and the boot loader was missing two operating systems. Tried the Repair Grub Bootloader tool included with the live Mint 21 yet that option as suggested in the instructions for upgrading Linux Mint to 21 did nothing to solve the problem. Tried to re-install the older 20.3 version of the operating system over the partition where 21 was installed and for some reason the live version installed without any boot loader and wound up with everything lost and grub rescue. Tried to remove and rearrange where the boot loader would point to open up a menu and nothing worked. Could not get into the Fedora Grub 2 config file to possibly change the menu there (this was the file that presented my menu before I attempted to upgrade to Mint 21, was locked out of the Fedora Grub config file attempting to use a live version of Fedora or Mint. In the end I had to remove Mint and Fedora 36 that both worked very well and took many hours to set up for personal use. I did re-install the Fedora 36 operating system over a partition and was able to get this installed yet could not even get the older Mint 20.3 thumb drive with live version to boot up, strangely since this was the exact thumb drive I used to install the os last year and it worked fine. Also tried a live version of 21 from a thumb drive, the operating system did open on the thumb drive yet most of the programs on it would not open for use, at this point needed g-parted. Got the repair Grub tool to run yet did not change anything. Tried to install Mint 21 using from the thumb drive live version yet program would not even open. Did check sum on this iso before using it, following instructions looked okay and not tampered with.
After catching a lot of criticism about running older versions of operating systems due to security issues where support no longer is available I decided to keep up with the changes. Now I experience the same thing they warned about as a reason to upgrade, security issues causing problems that may effect your operating system. As a result of taking that advice and upgrading I have lost everything trying that option,extremely depressing on my psyche.
In conclusion you may be better off taking your chances with something that is obsolete, simply keeping it off the internet, or at least minimum for absolutely necessary. As the old cliche goes “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. 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.
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Re: Mint 21 Upgrade - How did it go?

Post by rossdv8 »

I have never used TimeShift prior to this upgrade to Mint 21, and I noticed that If I wanted to write to an External Drive, it had to be formatted for Linux file system. If I'd had any my usual multi boot system I think I might have gone out and bought a spare External HDD and formatted it to Ext4 or something, then run TimeShift.
As it was,I'm currently only running Mint, so Mint 20.3 was only taking up a bit over 25GB of my root partition. I let Timeshift drop it somewhere in /home.

I'm curious though. With Timeshift, when you run an Upgrade like this - does Timeshift copy ALL the operating systems as they are (including GRUB)? Or does it ONLY copy the existing Mint OS root?

I've never 'needed' to know, and I'm sure there are other people who might be curious . .
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Re: Mint 21 Upgrade - How did it go?

Post by RollyShed »

Pjotr wrote: Mon Aug 08, 2022 9:38 am Upgraded two machines by means of a fresh clean installation of 21 over 20.3. Zero problems. 8)
Upgraded 6 computers by means of a fresh clean installation of Cinnamon 21 and more to do. Zero problems. 8)

A bit of a hassle getting an Epsom L405 printer to go. It ended up with the L341 or some such driver and worked OK.
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Re: Mint 21 Upgrade - How did it go?

Post by The Muffin Man »

I did 3 plus a vm. 3 were XFCE and one was Cinnamon.
I'll have at least one more coming up.
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Re: Mint 21 Upgrade - How did it go?

Post by AZgl1800 »

I installed LM21 Cinnamon on an HP All-In-One today,

the only tricky part, was figuring out how to get into the "boot device menu", google found that in 2 seconds.

sorry MickySloth, but there is no trace of you on it now :mrgreen:
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Re: Mint 21 Upgrade - How did it go?

Post by Cosmo. »

Aftermath wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 7:38 pm The only reason I upgrade is to keep up with security updates not to redesign my operating system functions and features.
This is no reason. Mint 20.x gets support (inclusive security patches of course) until 2025.
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Re: Mint 21 Upgrade - How did it go?

Post by Cosmo. »

rossdv8 wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 8:01 pm does Timeshift copy ALL the operating systems as they are (including GRUB)? Or does it ONLY copy the existing Mint OS root?
Yes (first part of the question), inclusive /boot.
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Re: Mint 21 Upgrade - How did it go?

Post by AZgl1800 »

Cosmo. wrote: Thu Aug 11, 2022 7:49 am
Aftermath wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 7:38 pm The only reason I upgrade is to keep up with security updates not to redesign my operating system functions and features.
This is no reason. Mint 20.x gets support (inclusive security patches of course) until 2025.
I have 19.3, 20.3 and now 21.3 on different machines and they all pretty much feel and work the same.

my 20.3 laptop is my daily driver, and I can't see a real difference from that to 21.3 Cinnamon.

but then, I don't push the OS very hard looking for niggling little things.
I use Firefox and LO writer/calc and that is as far as I go.
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