Linux Distros with better upgrade systems?

[EmpireITtech]

To replies that are harsh to the OP - come on guys, that's not what the Linux or Mint community is about. The OP is stating a legitimate frustration, but there are answers and points that will help him.

To the OP - yes, like many have said, there are other options available to you if you do not like "upgrading" your Linux Mint OS:

• 1) Always pick a LTS version of Mint. This guarantees you 5 years of support. Mint 13 is still under support until 2017, whereas Mint 17 will be until 2019.
  2) Use the rolling-release version of Mint, LMDE. This is a debian based version of Mint that offers point releases instead of major upgrade versions.

As a side note - once you're on LM 17, you can get all the "new features" in an easy press-the-button upgrade as Mint will start doing in-place upgrades for the Ubuntu 14.10, 15.04, 15.10 releases. You can read more about that here >> http://linuxg.net/its-official-linux-mi ... ntu-14-04/

[Fizzywhiskers]

Thanks to those who took the time to point to alternatives -- I was unaware that 17 was LTS, so I'm trying that for the moment. And my apologies for being irritable; if I had taken the time to explain what I was looking for more clearly, I would have been more likely to get good advice.

I do still think that a 6 month update cycle, with the expectation of a complete reinstall, is really unfriendly. There's a reason commercial operating systems don't do that. It isn't the amount of data to be backed up (most of my data's in the cloud anyhow), it's setting up apps and settings.

[ClutchDisc]

Thanks to those who took the time to point to alternatives -- I was unaware that 17 was LTS, so I'm trying that for the moment. And my apologies for being irritable; if I had taken the time to explain what I was looking for more clearly, I would have been more likely to get good advice.

I do still think that a 6 month update cycle, with the expectation of a complete reinstall, is really unfriendly. There's a reason commercial operating systems don't do that. It isn't the amount of data to be backed up (most of my data's in the cloud anyhow), it's setting up apps and settings.

That is why Mint will only offer LTS versions from now on.. No more 6 month cycle versions. 5 years and then reinstall is pretty good in my opinion.

[Fizzywhiskers]

Yeah, five years is great. Even two years would be OK. Six months is a bit short unless you had unmet needs with the prior version.

[ClutchDisc]

Yes and now with Mint all of the upgrades until Mint 18 will be very easy to do.. 17.1, 17.2, etc.

[H.Remedy]

I had a pretty painless experience moving from Mint 16 to 17. Personal data were already backed up, so no time wastage there. Also, I had set my home directory to a separate partition, and I just kept this partition when installing 17 (I know this isn't the recommended approach, but hey, it worked flawlessly for me.) As for software packages, I just used Mint's "Backup Tool" to make a list of installed packages, and Mint 17 installed 95% of them automatically. (The only ones not installed were 3rd party from PPAs. Big deal.) Finally, I do what another user here mentioned: I maintain a list of all the customizations I have made, and I just quickly run through that list after installing a new OS.

Honestly, the transition from 16 to 17 took me maybe 2 hours, and the vast majority of the work was done in about 25 minutes. (There's an old teaching rule that you spend 90% of effort on 10% of the students - i.e. the bad ones. We can apply a similar rule to upgrading OS's: 90% of effort on 10% of issues needing to be done.)

[EmpireITtech]

To be fair, Linux Mint is based off Ubuntu, thus it used to adhere to Ubuntu's release schedule and support dates. It will still follow the support date plan laid out by Ubuntu, but the upgrade method is now altered beginning with LM17. So it wasn't trying to purposely annoying users with 6 month upgrade paths, and you didn't even need to do that. You've always had the choice to use the current LTS and save yourself from the 6 month release cycle versions.

That being siad, one should always stick to these basic rules of thumb -

• 1) If you enjoy being on the "latest and greatest" Linux software and you're on an Ubuntu based distro, just get used to upgrading every 6 months. This is what I do, but it's optional.
  2) If you want stability and long-term support, always stick with the LTS versions.

NOTE - Now, If you're on LM17, this will be a much easier process (push-button in-place upgrade), but I believe it's still optional on whether you upgrade or not.

[deleted]

If you have /home on a separate partition, then it doesn't hurt at all to do a re-install (or repave with another distro).
-Hinto

[EmpireITtech]

If you have /home on a separate partition, then it doesn't hurt at all to do a re-install (or repave with another distro).
-Hinto

Very true, but I think it's always safer to backup your data you don't wanna lose before you ever re-install...saves you from any user error or HDD failure
I just always save my important files to the Dropbox app, then once I re-install and put Dropbox back on, I've got everything lol