Crashed upgrade - Choosing the right distro

Svampe

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Hi,

A couple of days ago, I had to upgrade a PC running Linux Mint 18.2 (out-of-the-box installation) to at least Mint 19.
I googled it at first, did all the recommendations (installed all updates etc.) and eventually tried upgrading from 18.3 to 19 with Mintupgrade. This ended with a black screen at startup. I've been through this before. This often leads to a lot of time spent with troubleshooting, before the problem is solved.

Is there a distro which is more stable when it comes to upgrading to the latest version of the distribution?

Thanks in advance.

Regards Oeystein A.
 


It's always smart to make a backup with a tool such as timeshift before upgrading from one mayor version to the next. That way you have a way to restore as before the upgrade if you end up with a broken system. You could try a rolling release distribution, this way you are always updating to the latest version without having to deal with problems you can get from upgrading from one major version to the next. But keep in mind when upgrading software things can always still break no matter what OS you are running.

Maybe @Condobloke has some advice for you when it comes to Linux Mint and upgrading from one major version to the next. I know he recently upgraded from Linux Mint 19 to 20.
 
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G'day Svampe, Welcome to linux.org

I do indeed have some advice for you.

Clean Install

I too have followed the recommendations etc etc to the letter, and then spent the next however long fixing the mess and doing a clean install anyway.

@f33dm3bits has it spot on the money. Take at least one snapshot of the existing Linux system using Timeshift. This can save some serious heartache later if things really go south.

I have seen advice written somewhere that making a copy of the /home/yourusername/.config folder, (probably to a usb stick) and then importing that into the new system saves a great deal of time. It may have been @f33dm3bits bits who gave me that advice !

So...Clean Install.... every time. especially of you are staying in Linux Mint
 
You could try a rolling release distribution, this way you are always updating to the latest version without having to deal with problems you can get from upgrading from one mayor version to the next.

This was what I was looking for. Thanks!


G'day Svampe, Welcome to linux.org

I do indeed have some advice for you.

Clean Install

I too have followed the recommendations etc etc to the letter, and then spent the next however long fixing the mess and doing a clean install anyway.

@f33dm3bits has it spot on the money. Take at least one snapshot of the existing Linux system using Timeshift. This can save some serious heartache later if things really go south.

I have seen advice written somewhere that making a copy of the /home/yourusername/.config folder, (probably to a usb stick) and then importing that into the new system saves a great deal of time. It may have been @f33dm3bits bits who gave me that advice !

So...Clean Install.... every time. especially of you are staying in Linux Mint

I was smart enough to use timeshift, so it saved my day.
Seems like I'm going to look for alternatives.

How is Ubuntu when it comes to upgrades? Is clean install the best option with Ubuntu also?
 
I can't help you where Ubuntu is concerned...no experience of it at all.

I have no doubt others will be along who are experienced with it.
 
I always stayed on the LTS versions of Ubuntu when I was still running Ubuntu. I never ran into any problems then so wouldn't know what to tell you since I only upgraded once from 16.04 to 18.04 I think it so it's not like I have a whole lot of experience. All I can tell you is I am quite happy with the experience I have so far with a rolling release distribution ever since I switched to one a year ago.
 
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I've used Kubuntu, especially LTS, for a very long time. No distro is perfect, I can guarantee that. What I can tell you is that having / and /home on two partitions is an extremely safe approach to a clean install, and clean install is all I ever use now. And, yes, I routinely backup my data to a rotated set of removable USB drives and not just before a version upgrade.
 
I ended up choosing the latest Lubuntu LTS, installed Retropie on it and everything is working fine.
Thanks for leading me in the right direction, guys!
 
I ended up choosing the latest Lubuntu LTS, installed Retropie on it and everything is working fine.
Thanks for leading me in the right direction, guys!
Ubuntu is not a rolling release distribution and LTS is short for Long Term Support. I thought I should just mention that in case you were actually wanting to use a rolling release distribution.
 
I ended up choosing the latest Lubuntu LTS, installed Retropie on it and everything is working fine.
Thanks for leading me in the right direction, guys!
Nothing against your choice it's a good distribution Ubuntu. Just curious why you ended up choosing Ubuntu LTS and not a rolling release distribution?
 
Nothing against your choice it's a good distribution Ubuntu. Just curious why you ended up choosing Ubuntu LTS and not a rolling release distribution?

Thanks for asking.
I strongly considered Debian, but previous experiences has been that I need to fix and adjust a lot of settings after installation. If I were to use Linux primary, then I would go for Debian and take my time in doing these adjustments.

In the end, the recommendations in running the LTS versions of Ubuntu, combined with using timeshift and doing backups of the home folder, was what made me go for Lubuntu.

I see you mention that you used to use Ubuntu. What distro do you prefer now?
 
Thanks for asking.
I strongly considered Debian, but previous experiences has been that I need to fix and adjust a lot of settings after installation. If I were to use Linux primary, then I would go for Debian and take my time in doing these adjustments.

In the end, the recommendations in running the LTS versions of Ubuntu, combined with using timeshift and doing backups of the home folder, was what made me go for Lubuntu.

I see you mention that you used to use Ubuntu. What distro do you prefer now?
A year ago someone told me I should try Arch, so I wiped my Ubuntu installation and installed Arch. I didn't think I could get used to Arch but my overall experience has been a lot better than I thought it would be. I haven't looked back and I don't want any other distribution on my desktop systems since Arch makes everything so easy.
 
A year ago someone told me I should try Arch, so I wiped my Ubuntu installation and installed Arch. I didn't think I could get used to Arch but my overall experience has been a lot better than I thought it would be. I haven't looked back and I don't want any other distribution on my desktop systems since Arch makes everything so easy.

Wow! I saw that Arch was highly recommended somewhere.
Things are working for me right now, but I'll give it a try one day.
 
but I'll give it a try one day

It's fun to play around with different distros. If you want to test and try, you can always grab VirtualBox and use that. If you want to play with and see a bunch of defaults, then you may be interested in this URL:


I'd urge caution - as that site can sneak up and change your clock when you're not looking! One minute, you're just testing out one distro to verify an answer, and you decide to push a few more buttons when suddenly it's four hours later and the wife is waiting for you to come to bed!

Anyhow, I find VirtualBox to be a great tool for really exploring other OSes.
 
Agreed, virtual machines are useful for playing around with different distros. However I don't find virtual machines enough for getting a full feel of a distro, nothing beats running a distro on hardware. I always
found I learned more when running it on actual hardware because then it is your only choice and when
not understanding something you are forced/encouraged to figure it out so that you do understand it. That's because using a distro as a daily driver you learn the ins and outs faster of the distro you are running.
 
It's fun to play around with different distros. If you want to test and try, you can always grab VirtualBox and use that. If you want to play with and see a bunch of defaults, then you may be interested in this URL:


I'd urge caution - as that site can sneak up and change your clock when you're not looking! One minute, you're just testing out one distro to verify an answer, and you decide to push a few more buttons when suddenly it's four hours later and the wife is waiting for you to come to bed!

Anyhow, I find VirtualBox to be a great tool for really exploring other OSes.

Thanks for the tip. I see the problem with the clock. LOL
Amazing site for playing around :).
 

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