4 ms·

There is one thing i hate of Mint and is the fact that it doesn't support dist-upgrade. Looking in the user guide of mint they suggest to "reinstall from scratc

by yulaow 13y ago

There is one thing i hate of Mint and is the fact that it doesn't support dist-upgrade. Looking in the user guide of mint they suggest to "reinstall from scratch the os when there is a new version of Mint". Seriously, wtf. The direct os upgrade is one of my favorite features of linux and they just windowsized it.

gmrple 13y ago
Honestly, they were completely based off Ubuntu at one point, and I have found upgrading OS versions on the fly to be flaky to say the least. From what I've read, I am not the only one with issues, so it is hardly surprising that a distro going for being extremely user friendly would choose to make this particular option unsupported. I know now they have a Debian version, but I have no experience with dist-upgrade on Debian.
SkyMarshal 13y ago
If you put /home on its own partition [1], reinstalling linux from scratch becomes really easy, better than dist-upgrade imho. Backup your packages [2], overwrite / with the CD/DVD/USB installer, tell the installer to use the existing /home as the new installation's /home, then reinstall your backed up packages [2]. Any software you don't get from the repositories, keep on /home (git repos, JVM, etc). This essentially makes the system files disposable, rewriteable, overwriteable, reinstallable at will, while all the custom config and personal data resides on /home. Keep /home backed up to multiple media. Makes upgrading to a new version relatively painless, and you get the benefit of a fresh install. 1. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-partplan/index.html http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-partplan/i... 2. http://askubuntu.com/a/81112/20362 http://askubuntu.com/a/81112/20362
- yulaow 13y ago
  I know perfectly that and infact i ever put /home in a different partition, as /boot and /var, but the big part of the config files are not in the /home but in /etc and i will lose all of them each time i have to reinstall from scratch. Dist-upgrade is one of the main advantage of a lot of distribution not rolling, and it has ever worked perfectly for me ( i remember having a ubuntu wm with 9.10 upgraded without problem since 12.04. After that i didn't need it more). Also thanks to that i have not to teach to my parents how to format and reinstall an os, they just need to press a button when the os itself warns them that there is a new version ready to download. It just that mint developers are more focused on make money spamming their ads everywhere rather that implement that basic feature.

by yulaow 13y ago

gmrple 13y ago

Honestly, they were completely based off Ubuntu at one point, and I have found upgrading OS versions on the fly to be flaky to say the least. From what I've read, I am not the only one with issues, so it is hardly surprising that a distro going for being extremely user friendly would choose to make this particular option unsupported. I know now they have a Debian version, but I have no experience with dist-upgrade on Debian.

SkyMarshal 13y ago

If you put /home on its own partition [1], reinstalling linux from scratch becomes really easy, better than dist-upgrade imho. Backup your packages [2], overwrite / with the CD/DVD/USB installer, tell the installer to use the existing /home as the new installation's /home, then reinstall your backed up packages [2]. Any software you don't get from the repositories, keep on /home (git repos, JVM, etc). This essentially makes the system files disposable, rewriteable, overwriteable, reinstallable at will, while all the custom config and personal data resides on /home. Keep /home backed up to multiple media. Makes upgrading to a new version relatively painless, and you get the benefit of a fresh install. 1. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-partplan/index.html http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-partplan/i... 2. http://askubuntu.com/a/81112/20362 http://askubuntu.com/a/81112/20362

yulaow 13y ago
I know perfectly that and infact i ever put /home in a different partition, as /boot and /var, but the big part of the config files are not in the /home but in /etc and i will lose all of them each time i have to reinstall from scratch. Dist-upgrade is one of the main advantage of a lot of distribution not rolling, and it has ever worked perfectly for me ( i remember having a ubuntu wm with 9.10 upgraded without problem since 12.04. After that i didn't need it more). Also thanks to that i have not to teach to my parents how to format and reinstall an os, they just need to press a button when the os itself warns them that there is a new version ready to download. It just that mint developers are more focused on make money spamming their ads everywhere rather that implement that basic feature.