I am currently using Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon 64bit.

Is there an easy way to upgrade to version 18, or would it involve reformatting the HDD and reinstalling from scratch?

If the latter, are the changes from 17.3 to 18 enough to make it worthwhile? (As a former Windows user of many years I am thinking of things like being able to do more via GUIs rather than typed commands, and in particular a file manager / image viewer that has more of the features of the XP window manager or whatever it was called).

Thanks.

I've rad on the Mint forum that it will take about a month when an upgrade to Mint 18 will be made available through the Updatemanager.

However, i advice to do a clean/fresh installation. Why? Mint 17.* i Ubuntu 14.04 based while Mint 18 is Ubuntu 16.04 based. The difference between U 14.04 and U 16.04 is significant enough to avoid a plain/blunt upgrade using the Update Manager.

I recommend that you do a fresh/clean/new installation. Just make sure you backup all your important files, photo's, documents, etc.

Good luck!

Here you can find some more info:
http://blog.linuxmint.com/

grumpyskeptic,

Definitely do a fresh installation and make backups of essential data.

This information may be helpful to you:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-distro-37074/

Never Upgrade: Always do a clean Install. Whenever you upgrade, you miss some non essential files/or maybe not so non essential files. A clean install always includes these files.

Do you have a source for this?

I upgraded Linux Mint KDE 17.2 to 17.3 through the Mint upgrade path with no problems whatsoever. It really depends on how well the upgrade path is planned and programmed by the guys at Linux Mint.

In saying that however, given that Mint 18 is based on Ubuntu 16.04 rather than 14.04 and, more importantly in my case, Plasma 5 will be replacing KDE 4, I will probably be clean installing Mint KDE 18 when it comes out, unless there are reports that the Mint KDE upgrade path is ultra smooth.

To summarise, it shouldn't in my opinion be "always". There are usually a few factors to consider.

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The difference between 17.2 and 17.3 isn't as big as the difference between 14.04 and 16.04. That's why you didn't had any issues when upgrading from 17.2 to 17.3.

However, is it always advised to do a clean/fresh/new install when upgrading from an older version to the latest version. In this case, Mint 17.* is much older than Mint 18 since Mint 18 has newer file/package versions incorporated which might conflict with (system) files/packages of Mint 17.*.

I found this:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/5466/...than-upgrading
https://www.linux.com/learn/linux-di...h-installation
http://www.howtogeek.com/142743/htg-...-not-upgrades/

Agreed, but the advice that had been offered was "never upgrade", with which I disagree.

It's a tough job, but the guys at Linux Mint are currently formulating an upgrade path from 17.3 to 18. If they thought that it wouldn't work successfully then they wouldn't be doing it.

Why are they doing it? Because they know that guys like you and me are able to do a fresh install and port over our packages, package settings and data (although I have to admit that I have a *lot* of packages on my computer, it's going to be fun), but many users of Mint, particularly recent refugees from Windows, may find it confusing.

If Windows can do it, so can Linux distros. Far better to find a seamless way of upgrading static distros rather than forcing clean installs on folk every so often. It's a lot of pernickety work, but I'm all in favour of the Mint guys investing time and effort in this. After a while they'll hopefully get the hang of automatically unravelling the myriad of dependencies.

My advice for more naive users, once the upgrade path has been produced and ironed out, is to make a *full* backup of all program settings and data, then give the upgrade process a go. Then fully test your new system. If it doesn't work out, do a clean install.

For those who are interested, the upgrade path from 17.3 to 18 is now available from Linux Mint:

http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3068

Please remember to do a full backup before carrying out any upgrade.

thats why i have a partition for my home directory, which i manually add to /etc/fstab after installation is complete. This can cause problems if gnome directories in home have changed, but you simply delete the system generated stuff except for what files are in /etc/skel

An upgrade tutorial for 17.3 to 18 available here.
http://www.tecmint.com/upgrade-linux...linux-mint-18/

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