Help? Need upgrade to 20.1 (not 20.2)

[Arete]

I've been working on setting up two MintBox Mini2s: one for me and one for a family member. (For those who don't know, these came with Mint 20 Cinnamon installed on compatible hardware.) I did the initial updates on the first box in June, and my upgrade was to Mint 20.1 which is running great.

But I wasn't fast enough getting started setting up the second box, and now it only shows an option to upgrade to 20.2 (which, given the amount of buggy behavior being reported here on the forums, is something we're not in any hurry to install).

So my question is a simple one: How do I upgrade to Mint 20.1 instead of 20.2?

Is there perhaps a command I can enter into the terminal that will allow me to do this? Or is there any other way to install the upgrade portion only? (To be clear, I am looking for an upgrade function -- NOT downloading and re-installing the OS.)

We would like the improvements that come with upgrading from 20 to 20.1 and will be happy to stay with that version for a while.

Thanks if anyone has a clear and helpful answer for this!

[mikaelrask]

Hey and welcome to the forum and linux mint Arete. If you have linux mint 20 installed you can simple upgrade from the update manger to 20.1. or just download the iso for 20.1 and install that. all the 20 version of linux mint is supported to 2025 side note so no worries there. is there something that does not work for you in linux mint 20,2?

[Arete]

Hey and welcome to the forum and linux mint Arete. If you have linux mint 20 installed you can simple upgrade from the update manger to 20.1. or just download the iso for 20.1 and install that. all the 20 version of linux mint is supported to 2025 side note so no worries there. is there something that does not work for you in linux mint 20,2?

Hi, thanks for your reply. Actually there is no option to upgrade to anything but 20.2 in the GUI menu (either through Update Manager > Edit menu or through System Reports. They both only show one upgrade option: 20.2.

I was really hoping there would be a choice, but there is nothing else listed as an option.

As for your question: There are LOTS of reports on the forums here of 20.2 causing massive slowdowns (slow boots, slow desktop, huge over-consumption of system resources) as well as various freezes and crashes.

My guess is that some of the slowness has to do with the newly implemented content indexing of Nemo, which could cause a lot more resource usage as well as lots of extra writing to the disk as the system (Nemo) goes about indexing the contents of all files.

And I don't need that -- the slowness, the extra resource usage, the extra wear on the SSD or the content indexing. For now, I'm very happy with being able to find files by name.

Anyway, if anyone can please tell me where to find (or create) an option to upgrade from 20 to 20.1 I'll be most grateful.

Again, downloading 20.1 as a full install and reinstalling the operating system is NOT a desirable option at all. This is a new computer that came with Linux 20 installed on it for maximum hardware compatibility, and I want to KEEP that installation.

Thanks again to anyone who can help!

[absque fenestris]

You can easily stay with Mint version 20.0 - until April 2025.
Nobody is forcing you - and there are no other compelling reasons - to update to Mint 20.1 or 20.2.

My main system is still running Mint 20.0 Cinnamon and I'm very happy with it. Virtually I have all Mint 20.2 desktops running and I am also very satisfied with them - as well as with LMDE 4 (including the new Nemo content search ...)

[Arete]

This morning I looked for command line upgrade commands (on the web) and I could only find a general "upgrade" command, not an "upgrade <target version>" command.

I'm worried that the general "upgrade" command would just grab the latest version, but is that true? Or would it give me a choice of either 20.1 or 20.2?

I need to know pretty soon whether there is a way to do this, as the person is waiting on their system being ready for them.

Is there any way to upgrade from Mint 20 to Mint 20.1 (as an upgrade function, NOT a new installation)? And if so, how?

Thanks if anyone can shed some light on this!

[Arete]

You can easily stay with Mint version 20.0 - until April 2025.
Nobody is forcing you - and there are no other compelling reasons - to update to Mint 20.1 or 20.2.

My main system is still running Mint 20.0 Cinnamon and I'm very happy with it. Virtually I have all Mint 20.2 desktops running and I am also very satisfied with them - as well as with LMDE 4 (including the new Nemo content search ...)

Thanks for your reply, and for your reassurances -- however that does not answer my main question. As I stated in my first post, we DO want the benefits of upgrading from 20 to 20.1. We just don't want the added overhead (and potential risks) up upgrading to 20.2 any time soon.

Can anyone please answer the question of whether this is possible -- AS an upgrade function? And if so, can you please tell me how to do it?

Thanks again to anyone who can help!

[karlchen]

Hello, Arete.

Update Manager will always offer to upgrade to the highest available minor version, never to one of the previous minor versions.
As you have noted, the moment the upgrade from Mint 20.x to Mint 20.2 had become available, Update Manager only offers upgrading to Mint 20.2, no longer to Mint 20.1
Once Mint 20.3 will have been published in the future, Update Manager will only offer to upgrade to Mint 20.3, no longer to 20.2 or 20.1.

There is no officially supported way of upgrading from Mint 20 to Mint 20.1, once Mint 20.2 has been released. It has been released.

I do not quite understand your concerns that upgrading from Mint 20 to Mint 20.2 could add more "overhead" to your system than upgrading from Mint 20 to Mint 20.1. Actually, I do not quite understand why you assume that upgrading from one minor release version to the next minor release were likely to add any "overhead" at all.
So far, based on my own experience with the minor upgrades on Mint 18.x and Mint 19.x, I have not noted that any of the minor upgrades added any kind of "overhead" at all.

Best regards,
Karl

[Arete]

Update Manager will always offer to upgrade to the highest available minor version, never to one of the previous minor versions.
As you have noted, the moment the upgrade from Mint 20.x to Mint 20.2 had become available, Update Manager only offers upgrading to Mint 20.2, no longer to Mint 20.1...
There is no officially supported way of upgrading from Mint 20 to Mint 20.1, once Mint 20.2 has been released. It has been released.

Thank you for your reply. That is what I suspected, but I was hoping there was a workaround. I guess I just missed the boat on this one.

Unless there is a way to force it to upgrade to 20.1 from the terminal (can anyone answer this one?), I guess I just have to wait for the current issues with 20.2 to be fixed.

I do not quite understand your concerns that upgrading from Mint 20 to Mint 20.2 could add more "overhead" to your system than upgrading from Mint 20 to Mint 20.1. Actually, I do not quite understand why you assume that upgrading from one minor release version to the next minor release were likely to add any "overhead" at all.

If you read back further in this thread, you'll see what my concerns are. There have been a lot of reports on the forums of big slowdowns (slow boots, slow desktop, etc.) for users who upgraded to 20.2. Additionally, some people have experienced freezes, crashes and other issues.

So far, based on my own experience with the minor upgrades on Mint 18.x and Mint 19.x, I have not noted that any of the minor upgrades added any kind of "overhead" at all.

You wouldn't have experienced anything like this, because it is only in the 20.2 upgrade that they made a big change to Nemo, and started indexing CONTENT as well as file names. That demands more resource usage and more writing to the disk, among other things.

Thank you for confirming my suspicions, i.e. that I just plain missed my chance. Short of doing a clean install of 20.1 (which would wipe the nice OEM installation that is specifically tailored to this computer's hardware), I guess I'll just have to wait until they fix the problems with 20.2.

I've been told that the devs don't read this forum. If that is the case, I really hope someone has been reporting all the above issues to them via some other channel.

Thanks again!

[decrepit]

have you tried booting from a usb stick, you may find mint runs just as nicely without the OEM installation

[djph]

I do not quite understand your concerns that upgrading from Mint 20 to Mint 20.2 could add more "overhead" to your system than upgrading from Mint 20 to Mint 20.1. Actually, I do not quite understand why you assume that upgrading from one minor release version to the next minor release were likely to add any "overhead" at all.

If you read back further in this thread, you'll see what my concerns are. There have been a lot of reports on the forums of big slowdowns (slow boots, slow desktop, etc.) for users who upgraded to 20.2. Additionally, some people have experienced freezes, crashes and other issues.

On the same hardware you're using? Because if not, their problems are a moot point.

So far, based on my own experience with the minor upgrades on Mint 18.x and Mint 19.x, I have not noted that any of the minor upgrades added any kind of "overhead" at all.

You wouldn't have experienced anything like this, because it is only in the 20.2 upgrade that they made a big change to Nemo, and started indexing CONTENT as well as file names. That demands more resource usage and more writing to the disk, among other things.

Initially, sure. Should level off pretty quick (like overnight, maybe a weekend at most).

Thank you for confirming my suspicions, i.e. that I just plain missed my chance. Short of doing a clean install of 20.1 (which would wipe the nice OEM installation that is specifically tailored to this computer's hardware), I guess I'll just have to wait until they fix the problems with 20.2.

Doubt it's anything more than a bog-standard LM 20 install ... maybe with a little front-loading of updates / drivers.

I've been told that the devs don't read this forum. If that is the case, I really hope someone has been reporting all the above issues to them via some other channel.

that "other channel" would be the project's github pages.

[Petermint]

An update has to change things because it would not be an update otherwise. Anyone with an Nvidia graphics card fears updates. Almost everything else is safe with minor updates, 20.0 to 20.1, 20.1 to 20.2. For big updates, 19 to 20, I do a clean install as it is usually time to clean up.

Boot slowdowns have a few causes and are more likely to be caused by doing something else at the same tiime, like reallocating partitions. Do you have custom code in /etc/fstab or the systemd files? Those can be lost. Create a Timeshift backup to an external drive. After the update to 20.2, run another snapshot. You can compare the before to the after to see any changes and add back in anything you lost.

Dual boot configurations can die but most deaths occur when Windows updates things.

Almost full disks or partitions can create problems due to the size of the update, a couple of gigabytes on disk. Clean out old files. If your magnetic disk is old, replace. Clean out fans. Remove applications you are not using. Generally do a spring clean to remove problems that might occur and be confused with the update.

If you do not have Windows, Nvidia, an almost full disk, or a failing rusty rotator, the update to 20.2 will be the same as the update to 20.1.