First of all, let me clarify something before this idea gets spammed with comments telling me that Mint has not enough staff: I'm not suggesting to go back to full rolling. I'll explain.

What I am suggesting is that non-core components that does not require to update a core component to be updated can be pushed in the repositories without worries as long as, well, it works.

Anything that can't cause a system crash or a malfunction like most, but not all, packages in the Internet, Office, Games, Audio & Video and Science categories can be updated without updating the entire system.

Updating these packages in a rolling fashion and releasing only the core system components with released-when-ready UPs could help in many ways: making the testing easier, having less things to worry about when releasing a new UP, reducing the size of the UPs, having the users spending less time in updating their system (UP4 to UP5 took several hours) and reduce the load on the servers when the UP is released. Also could help with giving LMDE users the latest version of a given software faster, which could be really needed at times.

In short, I'm suggesting to be rolling with "easy" things and semi-rolling with "hard" things. What do you think about it?