Deciding which LM version to get

[meongDroid]

The title seems too stupid but here's my story:

I am considering of converting to Linux, and after little research, I may take Linux Mint, normal Ubuntu, or Ubuntu Studio.
When I read some newbie FAQ here and there, I found Pjotr's site and he wrote some considerations whether to choose LM 18.1 or 19. https://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/mint
As LM 19 is still in beta, mostly I don't want to install beta version as I am currently doing some projects and I don't want any unwanted frustration at the wrong time.
My question is why did he suggest 18.1 instead of 18.3 which is the most recent and have all updates/fixes. Am I supposed to install 18.1 and manually upgrade to 18.2 and then 18.3 because there are some complicated things behind installing 18.3 right away and installing 18.1 and updgrading to 18.3?

[Pierre]

the main reason that Pjotr suggested to install the older LM18.1 would be if your machine
was an older machine, and that some kernels may support that older machine.
ie: Many old computers run fine on Linux Mint 19 Xfce, but most old computers run well on Linux Mint 18.1 Xfce.


there is also another idea that says that you should always install the mid-point in the series,
in this case, that would be LM18.2
and if you have no real preference, then this is the suggested version that you should install.

[Joe2Shoe]

I have 2 11-year old laptops with AMD Turion 64 x2 2.20GHz & Intel Core2Duo 2.33GHz with 4GB 800MHz RAM each. Each is running Linux Mint MATE 18.3 64-bit and they both work fine.
I just sold another 11-year old laptop with same specs, still running great.
Got a Toshiba Satellite C55T-C5300 (i3 2.70GHz) that was running LM Cinnamon 18.3 64-bit that the mobo died, sitting in a box with 8 other nefarious laptops.
Just recycled an Asus X450CA laptop (i5 2.5GHz) that the mobo died.
All of these laptops were running LM Cinnamon 18.3 64-bit, but they liked Mate 18.3 64-bit better.
They are all running kernel 4.15.0-23.
If your laptop is 10+ years old, I would consider LM Mate & max out the RAM & a 7200rpm HDD or an SSD.
Good luck.

[meongDroid]

My laptop is Lenovo G400s with Core i5 3xxx, 4 GB of RAM, 500 GB hdd, and NVidia Geforce GT 720M.
I don't know the exact manufacturing year but I think it's around 2010-2013.

Is Cinnamon gonna do well or better get MATE that some people mention is lighter?

[slipstick]

My question is why did he suggest 18.1 instead of 18.3 which is the most recent and have all updates/fixes. Am I supposed to install 18.1 and manually upgrade to 18.2 and then 18.3 because there are some complicated things behind installing 18.3 right away and installing 18.1 and updgrading to 18.3?

I think he suggested 18.1 because that is installed with the 4.4.0 series kernel. 18.3 is installed with a newer kernel (4.10 or 4.13, I don't remember which). The 4.4.0 is the LTS (long term support) series guaranteed to be supported for another 3 years. But you can install 18.3 and then drop back to the 4.4.0 kernel, as I have done (currently running 4.4.0-128 on LM 18.3 cinnamon). It's easy to do, if your machine will run on the installed 4.10 or 4.13 kernel (if it won't, then you will have to try to install 18.1 and see if the default 4.4.0 kernel will run). Once you are running 18.3, you just go to the update manager and install the latest 4.4.0 kernel and reboot - this will not be the default kernel loaded at boot, because GRUB will select the highest numbered kernel, so you will need to select the advanced options from the GRUB menu and then select to boot the newly installed 4.4.0 series kernel. If that works, you can then use the update manager to remove the 4.10 or 4.13 kernel, reboot, and 4.4.0 should be loaded by default.

Of course, if your machine runs on the higher numbered kernel series, you can continue to use that if you want. Personally, I prefer to use the LTS series if my hardware doesn't need any new features in the newer kernels.

[I2k4]

I always recommend that users who have never run Linux on a particular PC create a persistent live USB and thoroughly pre-test the distros, versions of those distros, and desktop environments (Cinnamon, MATE, XFCE) they're interested in. If running Windows, the live USB can easily be created (minimally an 8GB thumb drive with 2GB set for "persistence" storage) using this or one of several similar tools:

https://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal ... -as-1-2-3/

"Persistence" is stored memory that lets OS settings, installed software and changes to theming, the user interface, etc. be saved between reboots - a live USB without deletes them and reverts to original state when rebooted. The live USB install will run only marginally slower than a regular hard drive install, provides ability to try out all the PC's installed components and attached peripherals, and there's no risk to currently installed operating system or other data since there's no wiping, partitioning or writing to the hard drive. Incompatibilities or problems found on a thumb drive install are not "cured" by a full install.

No amount of well-intended advice here or elsewhere is going to help much with the specifics of your PC and peripherals you use, as compared with actually using Mint on it.