How to upgrade to Linux Mint 18
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8 years ago 45 |
A. Introduction
This tutorial explains how to upgrade to Linux Mint 18.
B. General considerations
B1. Do you need to upgrade?
Linux Mint 13 will be supported until 2017.
Linux Mint 17, 17.1, 17.2 and 17.3 will be supported until 2019.
If your version of Linux Mint is still supported, and you are happy with your current system, then you don't need to upgrade.
B2. Did you try Linux Mint 18 on this computer?
Each new version of Linux Mint comes with a new kernel. This means that it handles hardware differently. For instance, you may find out that a graphic card or a wireless adapter which currently works fine for you under Linux Mint, isn't recognized by the newer version of Linux Mint you're planning to upgrade to. In some cases, this could mean that upgrading to this release is the wrong decision, maybe you're better off skipping that particular release? There's only one way to know: you need to try it.
Linux Mint comes as an ISO image which can be burnt to a DVD or a USB stick. Thanks to this, you can try the newer release on your computer and see if your hardware is recognized without installing and before upgrading.
B3. Did you make backups?
Your personal data is the most valuable thing in your computer. If anything happens and you break your operating system, it's not a problem, it can be reinstalled. If you lose your data or you're unable to access it... that's a different story.
To be safe, make a full backup of your data on an external device (USB stick or DVD).
C. Requirements
To upgrade to Linux Mint 18 you need to satisfy the following requirements.
C1. Experience with APT and the command line
Upgrading to a newer package base is not trivial and it should not be performed by novice users.
You need to know how to type commands and read their output.
You also need to be experienced with APT. During the upgrade you'll need to understand the output of APT commands. You'll need to understand if a package needs to be removed, if it blocks the upgrade, if it conflicts with another package etc etc.
C2. Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon, MATE or Xfce edition
The upgrade tool only upgrades Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon, MATE or Xfce edition.
If you are running Linux Mint 17, 17.1 or 17.2, you first need to upgrade to Linux Mint 17.3 using the Update Manager.
The KDE edition isn't upgradable (Linux Mint 18 KDE will use a new and different desktop called Plasma).
D. How to upgrade
D1. Update your Linux Mint 17.3 system
Using the Update Manager, click on "Refresh" to refresh the APT cache and apply all level 1, 2 and 3 updates.
D2. Give your terminal unlimited scrolling
Open a terminal.
Click on "Edit"->"Profile Preferences"->"Scrolling".
Check the "unlimited" option and click "OK".
D3. Install the upgrade tool
To install the upgrade tool, open a terminal and type:
apt install mintupgrade
D4. Check the upgrade
To simulate an upgrade, open a terminal and type:
mintupgrade check
Then follow the instructions on the screen.
This command temporarily points your system to the Linux Mint 18 repositories and calculates the impact of an upgrade.
Note that this command doesn't affect your system. After the simulation is finished, your original repositories are restored.
The output shows you if the upgrade is possible, and if it is, which packages would be upgraded, installed, removed and kept back.
It is extremely important that you pay close attention to the output of this command.
If it shows packages which are preventing the upgrade, remove them (and take note of them so you can try to reinstall them after the upgrade).
Also note any important packages in the list of packages which would be removed, so you can reinstall them after the upgrade.
Keep using "mintupgrade check" and do not proceed to the next step, until you're happy with the output.
D5. Download the package upgrades
To download the packages necessary to upgrade to Linux Mint 18, type the following command:
mintupgrade download
Note that this command doesn't actually perform the upgrade itself, but just downloads the packages.
Note also that this command points your system to the Linux Mint 18 repositories (if you want to go back to Linux Mint 17.3 after using this command, you still can, with the command "mintupgrade restore-sources").
Use the "mintupgrade download" command until all the packages are successfully downloaded.
D6. Apply the upgrades
This step is non-reversible, and once you performed it, you cannot go back.
To apply the upgrades, type the following command:
mintupgrade upgrade
E. Alternatives
If you cannot upgrade to Linux Mint 18, please perform a fresh installation.
Generic instructions on "fresh upgrades" are also available at https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2
F. Notes
- It is recommended to use the default Linux Mint mirror before upgrading, to make sure you're using the latest version of mintupgrade. You can check your version of mintupgrade with "apt version mintupgrade", and you can check what the latest version of mintupgrade is at https://github.com/linuxmint/mintupgrade/commits/master. You can also download it at http://packages.linuxmint.com/pool/main/m/mintupgrade/
-
During the upgrade you will be asked to restart services. Just press
to select the default answer when this happens. - During the upgrade, error messages related to Mono appear in the output. You can ignore them.
Comments
Thanks Clem, this was a successful if tedious operation. I suggest anyone else trying to have something else to do at the same time, maybe reading a book, as it can take several hours as noted below if you have many packages installed.
There were a few dialogs to interact with and follow sensibly, for instance choosing a package maintainer's new config file over one I had supposedly modified for unattended-upgrades, and marking the boot drive (not partition) with spacebar when asked where to reinstall GRUB, due to having a dual-boot installation.
All the basic parts of the OS seem to work fine so far, with just a couple of small compatibility problems out of the dozens of applications that I use. For example, Mozilla and Libreoffice suites work fine, Exaile is now missing some codecs, 0ad was uninstalled, needing me to add the new version after using apt autoremove, and wesnoth replaced with a new version but still needed me to autoremove the old dependencies in order to tidy up the app menu.
very nice thx !
Thank you for nice tutorial! It`s really works - I upgraded from Mint 17.3 "Rosa" to 18 "Sarah" and than to 18.1 "Serena" without problems.
I'm surprised the instructions to upgrade aren't prefaced with 'sudo'.
Shouldn't the upgrade be: "sudo mintupgrade upgrade"???
Thanks.
Greg
thanks for the tutorial
Successful, but I wish I had know how this was going to work. I ran check and everything seemed fine. Minutes in the un-reversible actual install, I realized you should un-install every extra package that you dont use. I have many educational suits, games, several browsers, media and disk writing programs. I dont use or rarely use. This up date spent hours updating and reinstalling package's I dont even use and the clutter that goes with them.
I didnt have any serious problems. I would highly recommend you clean up your current version before upgrading. Its a no brainer but I totally didnt think of it until it was too late.
aptitude install cinnamon
Worked for me too, thanks!
We applied all level 1, 2 and 3 updates, and the whole upgrade completed successfully. After reboot, it appeared that we still had the old kernel, and the new kernel wasn't installed..! So in the end we selected the level 5 update for the kernel...
Great tutorial, but you might just want to do a clean install of 18 and rebuild. I tried this on a test system and it wiped out the main programs I had installed for the system.
The system in question is used for a home theater.
Thank you for a very nice tutorial!
Thanks for the tutorial.
D2 gives me a problem (Linux Mint 17.3 XFCE)
When i open the terminal and click on "Edit" i get "Preferences" and under "General", "Scrolling" is no option "unlimited scrolling"
works for my 17.3 cinnamon
Its a good idea , but i like Mint 17.3 more.a shame 18 is based on the new ubuntu 16.04 , ubuntu 14.04 based worked for me better.
Thank you! It did work, however somehow the bottom-bar (which includes the open windows, icons and menu button) doesn't react anymore... :(. It's just not responding anymore, which is a shame. I'm going to install Antergos anyway :)
Very clear, very helpful to this newbie ;-) Thanks!
Successfully upgraded two machines, one with Cinnamon and one with Xfce using this guide. No problems. Thanks Clem!
Excellent upgraded from mint 17.3xfce to mint 18 Xfce
followed the instruction took a while but upgrade
went fine Thanks Clem and mint team good work
upgraded from 17.3
worked perfectly
thank you so much, great job!
Hi everyone,
The Xfce path is now open.
jelabarre59: All the apt conf files ARE backupped in your home directory! The tool even wrote you that. Just have a look at the Upgrade-Backup directory in your home. Then you can try to change e.g. trusty to xenial in the conf files and copy them back one by one to /etc/apt/sources.d/ and perhaps download some new pgp keys. Expect some warnings on SHA1 signatures because not all repositories switched to SHA256 as their default.
JayBird707: the mintupgrade already IS ready for upgrading Xfce release, see github commits and try for yourself. The manual works the very same way for Xfce, I just successfully migrated 17.3 to 18.
It required some hacking, due to some problematic packages installed manually or from different PPAs. The apt upgrade process was terminated 4 or 5 times with different packages and even apt-get -f install could not fix it; I had to re-iterate these steps to get to the finish:
1) remove these offending packages with the command
dpkg --purge --force-all PACKAGENAME
2) apt-get -f install
3) mintupgrade upgrade
Repeat steps 1-3 as many times as needed, according to the errors that appear at the end of the prematurely failed mintupgrade upgrade step.
It would help a lot if the mintupgrade could detect this type of error and offer to force uninstall and purge these packages and fix apt-get and try again, or at least when terminating prematurely, offer such a tip to the user. After doing all this (and working with the system at the same time as usual) and rebooting everything seems to work perfectly. I switched to the Mint-Y dark theme and it looks very nice and polished. Xfce even seems to be ready for the Compton compozitor I was already using before. Good work!
After running the upgrade, I brought up y-ppa-maanger to check/re-enable my other repositories, and it seems the upgrade wiped-out all my other repos, zeroed out the /etc/apt/sources.conf file, and only left the single official-package-repositories.list file (not even the sources file). I would have expected the upgrade to disable or comment out other repos, not just indiscriminately delete them. It didn't even make backup copies.
Fortunately I had saved my old ones out, so now I just have to manually check and edit the repo listings. Had tehy been kept in place but commented, y-ppa could have done that for me.
Now that a stable release of XFCE is available when will this process apply to upgrading from 17.3 XFCE to 18 XFCE?
I also want to confirm that, following @hgomez's notes, mint-y related packages were not installed during the upgrade from 17.3 to 18.
Also, since it has been a week after the upgrade, another issue I discovered was that the Bluetooth stack was not operating correctly. Specifically, I had to remove all 'gnome-bluetooth' related packages from the distro and install 'blueman' via APT, instead.
The most positive "Comment" by @Hammer459 in months - even without trying:
"Thanks Clem for introducing an upgrade to the next version. I will try in the next few days :-)"
I wonder why :lol:
3 days ago I had this error following an upgrade from Linux Mint 17.3 --> 18.
----
initctl:Unable to connect to Upstart: failed to connect to socket /com/ubuntu/upstart: Connection refused
mdm(2463): Glib-CRITICAL: g_key_file_free: assertion ‘key_file!=NULL’ failed.
----
I see that
* mohang (see below)
Had this about a week back -- There's no FIX suggested here (until now)
I found something on this blog to directly address the solution:
* https://www.kevinhooke.com/2016/07/20/mdm-crashing-after-upgrade-from-mint-17-3-to-mint-18-and-solution/
Following an unsuccessful upgrade ....
-- REINSTALL CINNAMON --
From the linux console (ALT/F1) ... No mouse, just a keyboard.
sudo apt-get install cinnamon
Thinking back, I had a similar issue moving from 17.2 to 17.3; though not as diabolically evil. (but) Also back there I needed to the re-install cinnamon move to get me un-stuck.
Fool me once, silly me. Fool me twice, shame on you. Fool me thrice, shame on me. Don't get fooled again. UPDATE cinnamon BEFORE future upgradings (as a precaution).
Anyway ... I can mention that I've also had to update to Windows 10 on two other laptops this week. Event though Mint 18 failed, it wasn't so bad; I can just my image afresh and still restore my data.
In comparison a colleague had a Win 10 moment and he still is in a quandary. It looks like he needs to build a new Win 7 and migrate again.
WHAT I can't grok is why the liveUSB just doesn't have a Migrate and Revert option. It is a simple fix compared to a fresh Install.
For people reading -- Don't update unless you can't do it anyother way.
I upgraded a Mint 17.3 machine and notice mint-y-icons and mint-y-theme are not installed; whereas there are bundled in Mint 18. Easy to install but worth a note
Hello there!
I went through this tutorial and successfully upgraded my 17.3 (x64) Mint Cinnamon to version 18. Actually, I upgraded my distro constantly via this technique since Mint 17 was launched last year.
My reasons for upgrading were because my current machine packs a hybrid ATI-Intel GPU combo and kernel 4.4 brings better support for newer hardware.
I used the "repository-updating" upgrade path (so, step D and downwards), NOT a fresh/clean install.
Here's a bit of my feedback:
- after I simulated the upgrade via the mintupgrade tool (promoted in this article), it wasn't really clear for me which packages might be problematic for the upgrade process. What I am trying to say is that, even though I am somewhere between a medium-advanced CLI user (I am a Software Engineer by profession), the tool doesn't really give out in a CLEAR or ACCESSIBLE way the packages that might pose a problem with the upgrade. Specifically, one could have some explicit Hints in the output of the check phase, in regards to which packages should be removed by the user. The tool only lists that they will be removed by apt.
- in my case, because of the ATI-Intel GPU combo my laptop packs, normally I was forced to use fglrx (AMD Catalyst drivers) in order to have full control over the hybrid GPU switching. BEFORE the upgrade, I reverted the drivers to the open-source ones (not without any issues sadly, because of X11, however nothing serious which can't be fixed without any CLI magic in the end);
- lastly, after the upgrade completed I was surprised to find out that the Mint-Y and related icon/resource packs were not installed by default, even though cinnamon was upgraded to version 3 in the process, as it should. I had to manually install any mint-y related packages via apt.
All-in-all it's been a clear and fun way to upgrade to the newer version using this article information.
A sincere thank you, for all the Mint team members and to you clem for this tutorial!
Thanks Clem,
Successfully completed the upgrade. A bit painful, but got there in the end with eveything working as before.
I have tray via update manager and the instruction on your website to update to mint 18
but in the terminal says
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
mintupgrade is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
if i do mintupgrade check
i get : + Checking your Linux Mint codename...
+ Checking your Linux Mint edition...
------------------------------------------------
!! ERROR: Your edition of Linux Mint is 'KDE'. It cannot be upgraded to Linux Mint 18 'Sarah'.
!! Exiting.
what i have to do ?
I managed to use Clem's instructions however it was a somewhat less than perfect procedure. The upgrade took in excess of two hours. It left me with a very slow booting and somewhat broken system. Many apps refused to run which resulted in my purging them and reinstalling. The boot time from startup to login has slowed significantly but between login and desktop is even slower. Going through some of the logs now to see where the bottlenecks are. SAMBA is definitely one of those. I do like the look and feel of Cinnamon 3 and there are many improvements. If you have a working every day system I would urge caution unless you're prepared to tinker with it, otherwise do a clean install.
Don't upgrade now your mint 17.3 to mint 18 in work's computer, because the new relase have more problems for example : teme icons double desktop .. i don't know if the problem is in new version of cinnamon 3.0 or not but i have more problem.
Mint 18 64 bit Cinnamon
roberto from italy
I tried upgrading a fresh Mint 17.3 install to 18.
I should say that I tried this in a VM.
It gave many thousands of warnings/errors - but I carried on.
Eventually it finished after a long time & appears to work OK.
No Mint-Y though.
WARNING - Mint 18 appears to use systemd - exclusively(?).
Perhaps Mint 17.3 will get forked?
Unbelievable, that is cool! My hole system upgraded with a couple of copy paste commands, great job guy's.
One small thing. I cannot hit my menu and things in the task bar. Everything else is working as far as I can see now. clikking to itemsw on the desktop also works and I can enter my disk and nemo 3.
I can call the menu with the windows button from my keyboard. Items in the menu are clickable and working.
It is just clicking with my mouse that won't work. has anybody a tip to fix this?
Thank U!
Seems to work fine for me. I am doing it ricght now!!
Thankt team linux mint, for making it so easy for us!
Upgrade worked for me - thank you so much.
@mohang: Linux Mint 18 uses the service manager from the systemd project. Upstart is no longer used. I'd suggest you take this problem to the forums https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewforum.php?f=90 (register an account to be able to post new topics) as there are more people there that can try and help.
@rt1yrru: the "Unknown Multi-Arch" issue was fixed in an earlier version of mintupgrade. Make sure you have at least version 17.3.8. You can manually download it from http://packages.linuxmint.com/pool/main/m/mintupgrade/ (download the .deb file) and double-click the downloaded file in your file manager to install it. Then run the mintupgrade commands anew.
After i upgrade to mint 18 i got the following after restarting :
initctl:Unable to connect to Upstart: failed to connect to socket /com/ubuntu/upstart: Connection refused
mdm(2463): Glib-CRITICAL: g_key_file_free: assertion ‘key_file!=NULL’ failed.
Does anyone have an idea how to solve this issue?
got these errors too
Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'compiz-core'
Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'compiz-gnome'
Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'libxapian-dev'
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package python-cffi-backend-api-max
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package python-cffi-backend-api-min
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package python3-cffi-backend-api-max
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package python3-cffi-backend-api-min
Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'kwin'
Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'kwin-dev'
Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'kwin-wayland'
Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'kwin-x11'
Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'libkf5sysguard-dev'
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package php-psr-http-message-implementation
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package php-psr-log-implementation
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package php-seclib
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package php-sabre-http
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package php-math-biginteger
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package pypy-cffi
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package pypy-cffi-backend-api-max
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package pypy-cffi-backend-api-min
Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'compiz-core'
Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'compiz-gnome'
Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'libxapian-dev'
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package python-cffi-backend-api-max
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package python-cffi-backend-api-min
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package python3-cffi-backend-api-max
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package python3-cffi-backend-api-min
Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'kwin-dev'
Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'kwin-wayland'
Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'kwin-x11'
Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'libkf5sysguard-dev'
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package pypy-cffi
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package pypy-cffi-backend-api-max
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package pypy-cffi-backend-api-min
Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'compiz-core'
Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'compiz-gnome'
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package php-math-biginteger
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package pypy-cffi
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package pypy-cffi-backend-api-max
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package pypy-cffi-backend-api-min
Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'compiz-core'
Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'compiz-gnome'
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package pypy-cffi
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package pypy-cffi-backend-api-max
Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package pypy-cffi-backend-api-min
You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems
Reading package lists... Done
W: Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'compiz-core'
W: Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'compiz-gnome'
W: Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'libxapian-dev'
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package python-cffi-backend-api-max
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package python-cffi-backend-api-min
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package python3-cffi-backend-api-max
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package python3-cffi-backend-api-min
W: Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'kwin'
W: Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'kwin-dev'
W: Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'kwin-wayland'
W: Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'kwin-x11'
W: Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'libkf5sysguard-dev'
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package php-psr-http-message-implementation
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package php-psr-log-implementation
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package php-seclib
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package php-sabre-http
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package php-math-biginteger
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package pypy-cffi
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package pypy-cffi-backend-api-max
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package pypy-cffi-backend-api-min
W: Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'compiz-core'
W: Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'compiz-gnome'
W: Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'libxapian-dev'
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package python-cffi-backend-api-max
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package python-cffi-backend-api-min
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package python3-cffi-backend-api-max
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package python3-cffi-backend-api-min
W: Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'kwin-dev'
W: Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'kwin-wayland'
W: Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'kwin-x11'
W: Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'libkf5sysguard-dev'
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package pypy-cffi
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package pypy-cffi-backend-api-max
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package pypy-cffi-backend-api-min
W: Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'compiz-core'
W: Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'compiz-gnome'
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package php-math-biginteger
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package pypy-cffi
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package pypy-cffi-backend-api-max
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package pypy-cffi-backend-api-min
W: Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'compiz-core'
W: Unknown Multi-Arch type 'no' for package 'compiz-gnome'
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package pypy-cffi
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package pypy-cffi-backend-api-max
W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package pypy-cffi-backend-api-min
W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems
after using command mintupgrade check , the terminal wrote
2413 upgraded, 527 newly installed, 154 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 1,798 MB of archives.
After this operation, 1,614 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] N
i would freshly install linux mint 18 , as error is bound to happen ,as there are over 2k packages .
good work from linux mint team for providing easy upgrade and warning too,
Thanks Clem for introducing an upgrade to the next version. I will try in the next few days :-)