I have linux mint 9 installed and would like to upgrade to ubuntu 10.10 maverick meerkat without reformatting and reinstalling from cd.

update-manager -d is different to linux mint so I can't go the traditional ubuntu way of upgrading.

Can I at least convert to ubuntu 10.04 and then from that; upgrade to maverick meerkat?

If I woulda known it'd be this hard to try the new stuff out I woulda just stayed with ubuntu the whole time. Linux Mint is still cool anyway.

Haven't heard yet of this acrobatic show. Mint is an Ubuntu derivative; but 1<2 is not equal to 1>2 remember the simple arithmetic.

There is no need to reformat. If you have a space you can resize it, giving up about 12 Gigabytes for another distro, then install your ubuntu there.

Every distro bears the substance of "variance" from others. This means you may upgrade/downgrade only between versions, but not between distros.

Have you tried that already?

I don't think Mint can be "upgraded" to vanilla Ubuntu. How about you create a separate /home partition and maintain it through a fresh Ubuntu install. It takes some tweaking-- I don't like how Ubuntu doesn't support a separate /home partition for newbs-- but it can work.

This will, at the very least, preserve your /home directory. You may also want to preserve /, /var, and /usr.

The best solution here would simply be to do a clean install of Ubuntu 10.10 when 10.10 final is released next month. As Eveningsky339 stated, if you have a separate /home partition for all of your data, then doing a clean install of Ubuntu is a simple matter. If you do not have a separate /home partition, then this would be a good time to create one. See this:
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/installseparatehome
I always do clean installs of Ubuntu. I never do dist-upgrades; and I never have problems with upgrading to the newest version. Trying to do a dist-upgrade form Mint to Ubuntu 10.04, and then another dist-upgrade to Ubuntu 10.10 would have a high probability of failure in my opinion.
Write back if you need more help.

Forgot to mention this; the dist-upgrade method in Ubuntu often ends in tragedy. Clean install with separate /home partition is much safer.

yeah figures I'd have to do a clean install... I like linux mint but I'm gonna have to stick with vanilla ubuntu from now on. Yeah didn't wanna deal with any partitioning-reformatting but oh well...

Understand that creating and formatting linux partitions, and doing clean installs of Ubuntu or any other linux distro, becomes much easier the more you do it. After you have done it a few times it really just becomes another routine computer maintenance task that you perform every so often. Plus, you start off fresh with a pristine clean system that does not contain any of the detritus that is often left behind after dist-upgrades. This is especially true when considering a dist-upgrade from Mint to Ubuntu.

I have seen many people on the Ubuntu forums spend weeks or even months trying to fix problems that developed after a less than successful dist-upgrade. These people would be much better off spending their time just doing a clean install and avoiding all of these problems.