olle wrote:I wouldn't recommend that kind of update installation, there are lots of files hidden in the /home.
The hidden files contain setup information of your used programs and desktop. In the new installation these might be erranous.
Make a backup copy of all your own produced data ( like Music, Video, Downloads etc.)
Your email is in the hidden folder in /home, make a backup of it as well ( .thunderbird or .mozilla or whatever your email is called).
Recommended reading:
http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2
Well, yes and no. Your concern about hidden files is true but unnecesary. You see, even if these files were to conflict with new settings or instances of programs, developers adjust new versions of their sofware to deal with old versions of config files, be it by enabling them to read old configs, by translating those configs into something else or simply by deleting and ignoring them; can you imagine the dissaster if, say, a new version of firefox conflicted with its own config files? Can you imagine the huge problem it would be for, say, Cinnamon if it couldn't read it's own configuration files after an update? Both updates happen quickly and developers aren't stupid, they know of this conflicts and realize this kind of things can be real-life scenarios that happen every day. Thus, they think of a way for avoinding such regretable cases. They *translate* the old config files to the new versions "language" in order to make it compatible or delete it and ignore it. Config files aren't that much of a pain; if they were, nobody would ever use Debian Unstable (imagine about 40 package updates per day)
My say is don't worry all that much about config files unless you are moving into an *older* version of mint (and, thus, an older version of Firefox) since it *does not* happen backwards. New versions can read (or in the worst case, delete) config files from older versions, but that does not happen with an older version since, well, the new version didn't exist back then!
Also, think of the people that perform package updates (like those folks using Ubuntu); they simply get new versions of everything without having to reinstall or anything like that, so if hidden files were such a big problem, package updates would be dissastrous *every single time*. I have done about 40 reinstalls/upgrades in my time with Linux and have never had a single problem with config files. However, there was this one time when I reused a Mint 12 home into a Mint 11 install, which counts as downgrading. I ended up without panels or mouse
. However, I just deleted the .config directory and everithing went normal again.
That is just about config files; olle has a very good point regarding reinstalls and it *is* a lot safer to backup your stuff. Go with his method for safety. My unfinishable nag about config files is just for trying to clear out an unexplicable fear to config files I've seen in this community. Good Luck and Cheers. Danko.
Cheer up! Things are getting worse at a slower rate.
