Interesting article on upgrading with Mint

[tomt]

trinidad,
I agree with your in depth analysis on the future of ubuntu concerning developers. Just curious on your thoughts about Arch, particularly distros such as newcomer Antergoes and Manjaro.  I have noticed some Debian maintainers have moved on to other distros, curious perhaps. I also agree with your assessment of Mint`s environmental problems as I have personally experienced them. Happy Holidays. 

[trinidad]

Mint has it's own set of environmental problems with software permission levels which I still find annoying, but beyond that it is certain that there are going to continue to be problems in the future for many Ubuntu based distros, and the Mint message only reflects that. There is an awful lot of Deb testing and/or SID in Ubuntu, and one could wonder how long Ubuntu can expect to keep it's own development pace. LTS in Ubuntu does not mean the same thing as Debian stable. Ubuntu release schedules simply do not match Debian stable, and Ubuntu is simply unstable beyond its Debian stable base. I also believe that Ubuntu development will continue to shed support for older hardware. The philosophy here with LL is to provide a user friendly OS for Windows users. There it succeeds more than any other distro, but I see the update and upgrade path as wrought with future problems because of its dependency on Ubuntu development. This is not to say that these functions in LL are not exceptionally well executed, and much like Windows. It may be that Debian dies out in the next ten years, unless it can refresh its aging intellectual base of developers. Ubuntu seems to have found that fountain of youthful developers to drink from. How it all turns out remains to be seen, but it is a certainty that Microsoft will neither be caught nor killed, and to believe that could happen is to tilt at windmills.

For the home and small business user, dual booting with Windows, and/or conveniently networking Linux and Windows computers, tablets, and cell phones together via wifi and/or bluetooth is a necessary area of focus for Linux if it is to continue to be meaningful to American consumers. New proprietary gadgets will continue to relentlessly appear on the scene, and Linux users will continue to utilize RDP to Windows computers as the simplest way to deal with such things. Linux will never be able to support the amount of gadgets out there today. The MS based gadget birth rate is astronomical. Keep the good things in Linux, like stability, security, and long term support, and focus development on cross platform networking, wifi, and bluetooth. That will assure a Linux home and small business user future. No one is going to slay the dragon.

TC

[m654321]

What exactly is this guy saying?  Essentially, he asserts that Linux Mint (LM) discourages its users to update/upgrade the distro, and does the opposite by encouraging a "hands-off - leave well alone" approach, once LM is installed. He's not vague about that - in fact he seems to be very clear about the matter...

However, his assertion is completely false - I say this based on my recent experience of one of my setups,  involving LM18-xfce dual-booted with LL3.2.  When new updates are ready to install, LM always notifies me with an icon on the right side of the panel (this icon comes pre-installed on the panel) - this is very helpful. Click on this and a window pops up containing a list of the recommended updated/upgraded packages for you to install. The same icon also notifies me when everything is up to date on LM.

Regards
Mike

[Jerry]

Articles like this are designed to encourage a strong response by making vague claims. It compels people to react. Journalism these days is more about engaging the audience and less about writing fair, objective observations.

[LL-user]

Not impressed by this article.

Mainly because he's using updating and upgrading interchangeably, lumping everything together and coming up with a general black and white judgment without making any distinction between updating, upgrading, security fix, bug fix in general, feature upgrade, etc.

In my books there is only one MUST for a user - after backup that is - and that is applying security fixes. Anything else is optional, and the well known advice is here for a reason, if you don't need it and/or if it's not broken, don't touch it.
The last time I had a Mint system running there was a semi automated updating process in place, warning users about the need to update their system, even indicating whether it's security related or not. So what is he talking about?

My 2c

[Jerry]

Source - http://www.cio.com/article/3152807/linux/linux-mint-please-stop-discouraging-users-from-upgrading.html