We’re coming up on three years after installing Mint 20 on my wife’s HP Envy. It’s overdue for upgrading to a newer version and I have a few questions I’d like answered before we run an upgrade, just so I don’t mess something up.
We installed a LAMP setup on there because she had a WAMP setup on Windows this was to run an internal WordPress setup as an archive/holding area for her live web site content. We had someone help us by remote to get that properly installed. Will an upgrade to Mint 22 cause that to break or should that automatically carry over in the upgrade?
The Envy had a touchscreen setup and we had to deactivate that after Mint 20 was up and running. Since it’s three years later, I can’t remember if that was a modification we did on the Linux setup or if it was hardware/BIOS. I’m thinking it was the latter. Is this something that should carry over okay with running the upgrade?
With any upgrade there is always a possibility of breakage regardless of Operating System, though the FOSS community does tend to have less breakage during upgrades, backups are always a great way to combat/repair problems.
In any scenario I would make sure to have a complete backup and all media backed up externally.
I would think if using major applications such as Apache, MySQL and PHP that configurations would carry over so long as dependencies are met as they’re configurations rarely change in version that would break them.
The easiest scenario to test would be using a Virtual Machine copy of your current setup and run a test upgrade in the Virtual Machine(this may require a BIOS visit to enable the VTX setting as well).
You could also, space given, split your drive, Install Mint 22 fresh and build the new LAMP on there, once you’re certain it’s working correctly, remove the the old install and reclaim the rest of your drive.
As for the touch screen I do believe that would have been a BIOS setting, easiest way to check is look in the BIOS for that setting referencing it.
I know that wasn’t as clear of an answer as you’d have liked but it will at least give you an idea of a way to move forward.
I had made a complete backup using time shift to a SD card. The problem is, I haven’t braved it yet. .lol
I have heard, as MrDeplorableUSA had said, Linux is pretty stable but do make a backup. Timeshift was the number one recommended backup device for Mint. The SD card was more of me using what I have built in that the computer, during a reboot, could find if all goes wrong.
I am running a HP Pavilion, and have had no issues with the touch screen. The bios, once cleaned up from the Windows garbage, worked well except for the Geforce drivers. I finally got that under control with lots of help from these folks on jeff.pro. Let us know how your upgrade went. . .maybe I’ll brave it and give it a whorl.
I faced your same question regarding the change from Mint 20 to 22.
Rather than upgrading 20, I elected to do a fresh install of 22, overwriting whatever clutter-and-confusion I had amassed in 20 during my beginner’s, 3 years.
(I briefly considered installing a new SSD on which to install 22. Worst case, I figured I could always return the v20-SSD if my v22-install tanked on the new SSD.)
The fresh-install process (on the original SSD) took about a day and a half to complete. It went so much more easily than I could have imagined. I actually understood what I was doing! I’ve learned more than I realized from our Linux community during these years.
The journey was actually a lot of fun. As I looked thru each of the System Settings, their functionalities were pleasantly familiar, making it easy to configure my Mint 22 just like 20.
Then, with fresh installs of the programs I regularly use and restoration of my data files, my Dell e7440 is now running like greased lightning.
If y’all installed LAMP once, it might be worth doing it again, on a clean Mint 22. Guaranteed safety for wife’s files.
Interesting @nwarren, We do LuckyBackup for files and Timeshift for the system files on an external 2TB drive, so file backups have been a regular thing. We used to do iDrive for it, but had a problem where the laptop fan would run a lot throughout the day because of the incremental backups. Once we took iDrive off, the Envy was quiet all the time.
I wondered about maybe splitting the laptop into two partitions and installing Mint 22 on the new one, then setting it all up, and making sure all works fine, then move all my wife’s work files over. She mostly has the usual files of docs, images, some audio files from podcast recordings and such. Not using a lot of the drive for things. I’d venture to say probably less than quarter of the HD total.
@DavidBorrink , I, too, started out using LuckyBackup, but for some reason that I can’t remember, switched to FreeFileSync. FFS is working well for me.
RE two, separate SD cards: I chose to use two because of the formats:
Timeshift/system → SD card formatted EXT4 (dedicated Linux) and
FreeFileSync → SD card formatted FAT32.
The FAT32 formatting allows me to also use the SD card in an old, separate, Windows 10 laptop. It doesn’t happen often, but when I want to, I can.
If you decide to install Mint 22 on a separate partition, do let us know how it works out.
You know, life gets busy and you come back to the question a couple months later. LOL…
Okay, we decided that we didn’t need to keep the LAMP setup on her laptop because we have our own server for the business and that can give us a private domain to keep the WordPress archive on. We didn’t have that in our possession when we set up her Linux laptop three years ago, and now we realize it’s something we can take off her laptop and disregard. We didn’t connect those dots til just now. Sometimes you can’t see the solution and then… “hey, we don’t need to keep that on there anymore, we can do this… NOW.”
So, trusting that the BIOS setting for the touchscreen won’t be an issue since it’s a BIOS thing, we’ll just go ahead and do the Mint Upgrade to 22 after a quick backup of the systems.
Okay, I’ve got questions about the upgrade process. I see that upgrading from Mint 20.3 to Mint 22 means that I’ll need to do a “Fresh Upgrade” per the LinuxMint.com site (Linux Mint - Community). It says I’ll need to do a backup of the data and the software selections which obviously I do to an external drive. Then I do a liveDVD burn of the ISO image. I have an external DVD player that I use with my Mac to burn DVDs. Am I able to burn the ISO on the DVD on MacOS and still have it be recognizable by my wife’s laptop when I have to boot up to it? Or should I burn the DVD while on her laptop in Mint 20 so that it’s truly recognizable and is there a burning utility on Mint? I see there is Xfburn and do some of you recommend that one?
I’m a little surprised that this is having me back up the software and the data to a separate drive, and that the new update is actually a clean install, then the software and data is brought back in, thus requiring a big backup to an additional external drive just for this operation. Windows and MacOS don’t require a removal of the data and software to do an upgrade, they just handle the data and applications and work them back in.
Okay, I found a path on a post on forums.LinuxMint.com that shows a three-step path to go from 20.3 to 21, 21 to 21.3, then 21.3 to 22 for an upgrade that apparently does not involve having to save to an additional external drive but involves using TimeShift to save current settings (which we do already), and I would assume that it assumes we do LuckyBackup content saves (as we currently do - so this would be using our existing backup methods in the process).
It may be three steps, but it appears that I’m not having to do a “fresh install” to do it, but it’s more of an “upgrade but not having to remove the data” path. As long as I have good backups between the versions, it would appear this would help me avoid having to make additional backups on another 1TB drive.
I found the upgrades to work well doing the “step method” of those three upgrade paths. I had a couple of apps that I needed to delete from the Software Sources to allow the APT check to pass through. Overall, I’m impressed with how well it went, in spite of having to spend a good share of the day working my way through three upgrade sessions.
David, I had looked on the blog and saw that step process. Its good I returned to this post as I was unsure of its stability and ease of operation. Sounds like a winner. I certainly dont really want to do a fresh install with buckets of data to recover!
What kind of apps were problem for you, if you dont mind me asking? Just curious how you handled those and if that caused you long delays during the process?
Paul, there were two issues that arose during my process. One was Skype. We had been using Skype but decided to switch to another app a while ago. During the APT check process of the first upgrade, there was a flag about Skype that needed to be done. When I removed the remaining Skype files via Software Sources, that allowed things to move forward with the 20.3 to 21.0 upgrade process. That went fine and the laptop booted up into 21.
The 21 to 21.3 upgrade was without a problem.
The 21.3 to 22 upgrade had another APT check issue with an app but I’m not remembering it at that moment, but used Software Sources to remove those files which was something we didn’t need, either. Then the 22 upgrade worked well.
You do a lot of praying and crossing your fingers during these things. I had Timeshift and LuckyBackup files at hand. After we got done with 22, then we found out that neither Timeshift nor LuckyBackup was working. Someone on the Linux Mint forums pointed out to me that LuckyBackup support isn’t happening any more and that we should find something else. So that was a surprise when we got up to 22.
As for Timeshift, I resorted to reformatting the external drive we were using, and I created new Timeshifts from scratch with no problem. I switched my wife’s backup to FreeFileSync and we’re back in business.
Thank you so much David, thank you for letting me know on those backup programs also. I was checking out the lucky and free file so now I know which one to choose. As far as the APT, I don’t really run apps as a general rule and certainly don’t have Skype. If I need to use the ole tracker jackers, I maintain the spyware hub called Microsoft on an old computer. If I can find a good solid replacement for Quickbooks I would load it up in a instant!!
Thanks so much!
