A new version of Ubuntu comes out on April 17th. It will be LTS or long term support. If you install it and do not upgrade it, then support will last for five years. If you install it and upgrade it in six months then you will have to do so every six months. Ubuntu has two upgrade paths. One for the stable crowd and one for the adventurous crowd. There is an important change to note. Support for six month releases used to be for 18 months. That is no longer the case. It is only for 9 months now which means you no longer have the option to NOT upgrade in six months because you will have to re-install after 9 months if you let the support run out.
Linux Mint will come out about a month later and will be based on Ubuntu, as always. There are two differences. One is that Mint does not feature Unity as a desktop choice. Instead it has two of its own, Mate (Mah-tay) and Cinnamon. The second difference is that Mint cannot be upgraded the same way that Ubuntu can. It has no upgrade tool. You have to manually change the repository sources by editing a file as root and then you will have to type some commands to do the same thing. Ubuntu does this from the GUI and it has a better chance of success, depending on how carefully you edit and type. There is good news in this, though. Linux Mint will also be LTS, so you won't have to upgrade for five years, unless you want to do it every six months.
There are advantages to both upgrade cycles. Five years gives you stability and you do not have to worry about things not working for five years. Six month cycles give you the latest and greatest versions of the applications and kernel with drivers.
I have followed an aggressive upgrade path since 2000, both in RPM distributions and Debian ones. I have NEVER had a computer "brick". Nor have I heard of that happening to anyone else. What can happen is that you may have a system crash and become unstable and have to backup and re-install. That is no big deal once you have done it a few times. I live on the edge, computer-wise, and therefore I have done just about everything else to my system.
About 10 years ago, I got smart. I started my own home partition with Linux being spread across three partitions, / (root), /home and swap. Since that time, I have never had to backup. Instead I just re-install and reformat the root partition. I re-use the home and swap partitions. The trick is to do a manual or custom installation and then check and double check that you have chosen NOT to format /home, but to format the root partition. I use the same user name and my settings and data stay intact.
Re-installation never scares me. Many experienced users actually prefer to do this than to upgrade. It gives you a fresh start. It is not a lot of work either once you learn a few tricks. You can back up your sources and your package list and post-installation open the package list and the package manager will re-install everything that was on it before. You can even use your computer while all this is being done. The only down time is the actual installation which takes half an hour or so. Longer if you choose to update before you re-boot. I do not. I do a basic installation then update after it re-boots. That way my computer is down for a shorter period of time.
There is a lot to digest here. Think about it and what your goals are, then make a plan to implement things slowly. Make sure you get a handle on one thing before you change it up too much and cannot figure what the problem is. Most problems have an easy solution and the worst, re-installation, is not so scary as it may sound.
Roy
On Thursday, April 10, 2014 12:46:41 AM, Gene C. Falck <gfalck@merr.com> wrote:
Hi, Roy,
You wrote:
> If you are on the six month cycle you MUST upgrade every six months or
> you run into trouble. Support used to be for 18 months but that has
> been shortened to 9 months. If your support runs out then you must do
> a re-installation and cannot get any upgrades and security patches.
Hmm. I ran into a mention of a distro bricking a
computer when it went out of support; that sounds
like big trouble. I gather Mint, which is what I'm
trying to set up, is about to have newer version
come out. I suppose, then that when the new one
comes out I'll have about three months to upgrade. (?)
--
Regards,
Gene Falck
gfalck@merr.com
You wrote:
> If you are on the six month cycle you MUST upgrade every six months or
> you run into trouble. Support used to be for 18 months but that has
> been shortened to 9 months. If your support runs out then you must do
> a re-installation and cannot get any upgrades and security patches.
Hmm. I ran into a mention of a distro bricking a
computer when it went out of support; that sounds
like big trouble. I gather Mint, which is what I'm
trying to set up, is about to have newer version
come out. I suppose, then that when the new one
comes out I'll have about three months to upgrade. (?)
--
Regards,
Gene Falck
gfalck@merr.com
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