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.
