Mint me too!

Upgraded from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS to Mint 12

 

At last I decided to upgrade my EEEPC 900! The Ubuntu installation I was still using on it (10.04 LTS Netbook edition) was getting old so, after many live testing, and some “Test Drive” post I settled for installing Linux Mint 12 “Lisa”.

Why Mint?

If you read my post about Linux Mint test you'll have certainly noticed that it impressed me quite well. I mostly liked the Mint approach to user interface both open to innovation and respectful of old users. But what eventually led me towards a Gnome3 based distribution has been discovering, thanks mainly to Linux Mint, how this desktop environment can be expanded. I discovered, in fact that Gnome3 can be expanded using Javascript programming. Many extension are being developed and can be downloaded and installed from a Gnome3 page. Plenty of documentation and examples are available. Gnome3 guys didn't give of flexibility that had been Gnome2 characteristic, they just left it well hidden.

Installation

I prepared the installation, like usual, by writing a bootable SD card with Ubuntu's start-up disk tool. I then booted the EEEPC and started the installation program.

the installation wizard asked for the language, checked for disk space, internet and wireless availability. I so arrived to the installation type request.

here I have been a little surprised to find a “Upgrade Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS to 12” option. Inter-distribution upgrades are a little unusual, even if Mint is a Ubuntu derivative. Often even simple distribution upgrades give trouble what will be try to upgrade from a distribution to another? By the way I decided to give this option a try after all there would have been ever time to format all the disk if things went too much on the wrong side.

The installation continued with the usual time zone and keyboard selection and the user data form

then the files copy and installation process started.

not all the application I already had installed could be recovered, so I’ve been shown a message after the installation process completed

conclusion (for now)

here how my new desktop looks like

at a first view most of the settings have been correctly imported but, at a deeper analysis some issues has come out. The installation did not recognize the Windows installation I have on the 4GB disk, some applications like Fbreader have not been installed, I have some problems with apt sources and LibreOffice spell check is missing. I'm on the way to solve these problems, I'll write about it as soon as possible. Concluding the installation worked quite fine, you can ever expect little problems from upgrade processes since areal system is never like a installation program may expect to find. Is up to you decide between restoring all your home settings or solving the post-upgrade issues.