How to upgrade to Linux Mint 18

If you’ve been waiting for this I’d like to thank you for your patience.

It is now possible to upgrade the Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce editions of Linux Mint 17.3 to version 18.

The upgrade instructions are available at: https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2316

Upgrade for a reason

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

Linux Mint 13 is supported until 2017 and Linux Mint 17, 17.1, 17.2 and 17.3 are supported until 2019.

You might want to upgrade to Linux Mint 18 because some bug is fixed or because you want to get some of the new features. In any case, you should know why you’re upgrading.

As excited as we are about Linux Mint 18, upgrading blindly for the sake of running the latest version does not make much sense, especially if you’re already happy and everything is working perfectly.

Make sure to read the release notes and to know about the new features so you have all the information you need before deciding whether you want to upgrade.

Make sure also to try Linux Mint 18, in live mode, to know if it works well with your hardware.

Take your time

Read all the instructions and take the time to understand them, ask for help if you’re stuck.

The instructions will ask you to make backups and to try Linux Mint 18 in live mode. Don’t rush into upgrading and do not take shortcuts.

Don’t panic

If you’re stuck or wondering about something don’t hesitate to ask for help:

  • You can post here in the comments section.
  • You can ask for help in the forums.
  • You can connect to the IRC (from within Linux Mint, launch Menu->Internet->Hexchat). If you’re new to IRC, please read this tutorial.

224 comments

  1. Hello,

    How exactly does the upgrade impact the kernel choice? More specifically, will already installed kernels be available or only 4.4+? I guess the upgrade installs 4.4 by default, so is there a GUI way to get back to an older kernel after the upgrade?

    Thanks.

    Edit by Clem: It installs kernel 4.4 but doesn’t remove your current kernel. Post-upgrade you can use the Update Manager (View Menu -> Linux Kernels) to list the kernels and you should see the kernels you had before (3.13 or 3.19 depending on how you got to 17.3) as well as the new one. I guess if you remove 4.4 it should force a DKMS recompilation with 3.19/3.13. If you don’t need DKMS modules, you can keep both 4.4 and the old kernels and access these from the Advanced option of the Grub menu.

  2. Hi there!
    Will there be a Linux Mint 17.4? Where can I get this information?
    Thanks! ^_^

    Edit by Clem: No, it’s not planned at the moment anyway.

  3. I have LM 17.3 on three of my four Lenovo Thinkpads. The fourth has WIN 7. Since it is running well on the three, I see no need to do an upgrade to LM 18. Being that the Ububtu 16.04 code base is quite different from 14.04, that is another reason not to do a direct upgrade. Meanwhile, I hope Clem has been thinking about going independent from the Ububtu code base at some point in the future. It would probably eliminate many current upgrade issues.

    Edit by Clem: I see value in frozen bases. Non-trivial upgrades are an acceptable trade-off. LMDE is using a Debian base but that’s a bit off-topic though.

  4. How do we know which packages are preventing the upgrade?

    Edit by Clem: Hi Joe, if the upgrade isn’t possible, the output tells you why (i.e. which package and because of what conflict and/or dependency).

  5. Do I need to erase the ppas I have for 17.3?

    Edit by Clem: They’re removed (and backed up) during the upgrade.

  6. @clem
    It doesn’t say the list of packages. After starting the step “APT will now calculate the package changes necessary to upgrade to Linux Mint 18 ‘Sarah’.” it automatically restores the former APT sources and aborts.

  7. The upgrade worked! One question though – why the command-line upgrade, rather than through the Upgrade Manager?

    Edit by Clem: Because of the nature of the upgrade, the output coming from APT is really important. Also, this is the first time we support a base jump. Using the command line meant we didn’t need to focus on a lot of other things which could go wrong if we had used a UI. This upgrade requires good APT knowledge, so although it would be more comfortable to use a UI, it might deceive novice users into thinking it’s ok to just click Next without reading what’s written. I say this with experience and without judging, but it is our job to warn people appropriately. From a technical side also, this is not comparable to the upgrades between point releases, which is trivial and much more predictable. Here, a lot of things can go wrong depending on the user’s system and the packages installed. It’s important the user reads the output, understands it and responds to it appropriately.

  8. Errors were encountered while processing:
    /var/cache/apt/archives/libsane-common_1.0.25+git20150528-1ubuntu2_all.deb
    E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

    ————————————————
    !! ERROR: Failed to upgrade some of the packages. Please review the error message, use APT to fix the situation and try again.
    !! Exiting.

    Edit by Clem: The error explaining why libsane can’t be upgraded is probably there in the output, above that message. Scroll up to see it. You might also want to use “apt install -f” to try and fix the issue. Alternatively, if it helps, you can remove libsane and the packages requiring it. Do take note of the removed packages so you can reinstall them once the upgrade is complete.

  9. Is there an ETA for the XFCE version? I’m using MATE right now and loving it (especially the speedy x-apps) but I know my system performs better on XFCE.

    if there isn’t I may go back to 17.3 since as you say it’s good till next year. I love Mint! It’s easier to use than Ubuntu and looks better too!

    Edit by Clem: Hi Lou, I’ll touch on that in the Monthly News in a couple of days. It’s a bit off-topic so I’ll be brief. Xfce entered QA, a couple of bugs were found, they’re now all fixed (you might have seen the updates for Pix and Xviewer bringing Xfce support today) and new ISOs were made. I’d expect it to pass QA this week.

  10. How much data does this download, compared to downloading the ISO?

    Edit by Clem: There’s no fixed number because it depends on how many packages you installed. You can use “mintupgrade download” without upgrading though, so you don’t risk running out of space during the upgrade. If your bandwidth is small or costly, opt for a fresh installation. Package updates are way larger than ISO images. I don’t have the exact figures with me here, but there’s roughly 8GB/10GB compressed in these 1.7GB ISO files.

  11. Great.
    Everything fine after 17.3 to 18.
    One thing only:
    Solaar ppa can not be added due to incompatibility error..
    I can live with that. 🙂

    Edit by Clem: The latest version of solaar (0.9.2) is already in the repository, so no need for the PPA (not yet anyway).

  12. I there an approximate time that the Linux Mint 18 KDE desktop will be released?

    Edit by Clem: Hi Bruce, not yet sorry.

  13. One more for the waiting list on LM18 KDE… mostly just curious about the new plasma stuff, but I can wait (obviously, it’s my only option). Grats to MATE and Cinnamon folks on getting an upgrade path!

  14. I have the same issue that @joe had earlier in the thread. It doesn’t say the list of packages. After mintupgrade check it automatically inputs an “n” in the “Do you want to continue “y/n?” and aborts.

    Edit by Clem: Can you pastebin the complete output?

  15. Hi Clem.

    What about LM17 KDE edition? Any infos? Is this going to have latest stable kde release or the kubuntu one? Please, consider the neon version.. 🙂

  16. I Clem.

    When mint cinnamon 18 came out, i tried it and got something confusing.
    After i turn on my laptop (dual core, 4gb RAM), the 2nd core gets stuck in 100%. I see in the system monitor and i have nothing in the processes to make that. I have instslled updates, microcode and even tried another kernels and nothing resolve it.
    In mint 17.3 i don’t have such problem. It actually freezes my computer After a while With both cpu in 100% and i can’t do nothing With him. What could i do?

    Thanks in advance and sorry for my poor english. I’m trying my Best to be understood.

  17. I’m taking the “ain’t broke” advice here to heart with my main concern being up to date with third-party software rather than the OS and DE, which are fine with 17.3. My understanding from the tech press is that Mint will commence support for Snap updates with 18.1, and my suspicion – without knowing – has been that installations of Firefox, LibreOffice and other software that implements Snap might not update so perfectly at that time, and a clean install of the whole shebang be best.

    It might help users to advise on how Snap will be implemented in Mint, what to expect for the major third-party software affected, and whether a clean install is likely to be best for it.

  18. Hi Clem / Mint Team

    I am afraid that I rather bodged my update, though most things work. One thing that isn’t working, though, is this: Software Sources still shows ‘17.3’ and I have a problem running updates. Can you advise? (The system Information tool says 18, though, and I have the new wallpaper, the new x-apps, etc.)

    Edit by Clem: Make sure your version of mintupgrade is current (it should be mintupgrade 17.3.8 at the moment, check the notes in the tutorial if it isn’t.). Run mintupgrade upgrade again, and pastebin the output if it still doesn’t fix the issue.

  19. Ah: fixed it all now, save for one little thing. I can’t get the ‘CPU limit’ daemon to work properly. It’s applying itself – limiting the CPU of – all processes, instead of only the one’s I’ve told it too. This means it interferes with ‘apt’. Odd.

  20. Hi Clem,

    Love Mint 18 – Zippy install, nice balance of software/apps and overall really nice fit and finish.

    One question – is the folder sharing via Samba? I installed Samba too, but I wonder now if it was even necessary.

    For some reason, my tvMobili keeps crapping out when I go to exit to the root DLNA folders on my TV. Any reason that you can think of for that?

    Curt

  21. I checked the system to see if everything is ok.
    This is what i found:
    Kodi was deleted.
    Systemback doesn’t work but Timeshift is working and i can restore Mint 17.3.
    Mint Y was not installed. I found icons Breeze and Breeze dark.
    TV Maxe lost the changes i made.
    Otherwise the system and the programs are working as usual.
    Ubuntu Tweak could be installed and Computer Janitor can clean the system.

    This is not the main system but a copy of it on an external HDD where i can test everything before i change something on the internal HDD where i have the real main system.

    For the 3 programs i need 10 minutes to have them back and i can not say that i need Mint Y.

    In conclusion this is a very good method to update a system to a new version.

    Thank you again Clem for your work and effort!

  22. Waited for the upgrade and tried to run it, but it would not reboot … ended up doing a complete clean install.

  23. If you boot from a Gparted Live CD, you can copy your partitions onto a spare hard drive and then do the upgrade (or anything other potentialy risky operations). If it goes wrong or you’re not happy with it for some reason, you can boot from Gparted Live and restore the original partitions.

    If you have a laptop, you can connect an external SSD drive via USB using a simple little adapter cable that can be bought cheaply on ebay. USB connection is slow so be patient.

    I’ve been using this technique for three years to keep snapshots and backups of my root, home and data partitons and it’s let me recover from various disasters.

    Note: Restoring back onto the original disk is not a problem. If you restore or clone onto a different disk and it won’t boot, you can run a live Boot Repair CD (64-bit or 32-bit version as appropriate) to fix grub.
    Also, I’ve found that it’s better to use device identifiers (/dev/sda1 etc.) in the fstab rather than the UUID identifiers that are used as standard. This is especially important if you connect your ‘backup’ hard drive into your desktop alongside your normal boot drive in order to lift individual files from it.

  24. I tried the upgrade from 17.3 and got the same error message as “s” (at 9 above). My laptop wouldn’t boot afterwards, so I did a fresh install of Mint 18 from an ISO on a USB stick. It worked well. In fact, I now have versions 16, 17 and 18 available to boot from the grub menu, which is nice!
    So far, I very much like v. 18. The trackpad on my Asus laptop seems to be behaving much better. Now I need to determine if my LMMS (music software) works ok on 18 (I installed LMMS 1.1.3 and compiled it on mint 17).
    Many thanks.

  25. Hi Clem & Team
    Have used both clean install (on my Dell Latitude D400) and upgrade from 17.3 to 18 (on my Dell Latitude D610). Apart from an initial issue with wifi (Broadcom issue….) that I subsequently solved using Software Manager, all went reasonably smoothly on both machines. The upgrade instructions are well laid out and easy to follow; as long as you keep them by you, all that’s needed is a little patience – and you need much less of that with LM than with Windows!!!! Thanks again for a great distro.

  26. I love Linux Mint. Much more you will imagine.
    I use LM 17.3 into my Micro Laptop with 1 GB RAM, Atom NB255 Toshiba, with XFCE. Works wonderful, and Wine for some software I used in W7.
    I erradicate the original Windows 7 starter thats coming in.

    So I download the LM 18 Mate and create a USB booter live drive.
    Works wonderful too in my micro from the USB, but I have a quest. I can upgrade to LM 18 Mate from LM 17.3 XFCE directly without reformat the HDD?

    Or for now it isn’t possible?

    Edit by Clem: No, after Mint 18 Xfce is out, you’ll be able to upgrade from 17.3 Xfce to 18 Xfce.

  27. I immediately tried the upgrade to 18 according to this procedure.

    I have to set the mirror server by using the Software Source,
    but the repository that is referenced in such mintupgrade download has become the main server.
    It will be very concerned about.

    Edit by Clem: Yes, the upgrade points to the default servers to ensure everything is as up to date as possible. Post-upgrade you can use the Software Sources tool to point to mirrors again.

  28. Hi!

    It’s great to hear there is an upgrade option now. 🙂

    My big question is: can I upgrade from Mint 17.3 KDE to Mint 18 Cinnamon? Will the update process work?

    I do not care about programs and packages that are part of KDE and that are not available in Cinnamon, I am asking this because I am done with KDE, it has become too bloated and slow for me, I need a faster desktop. I had a look into KDE 5 on a live distro, and it really made me shiver – not in anticipation, though…

    So, this seems to me like a good point in time to make this step, and if it could be done without the need for the usual backup and restore method, it would really be the icing! 🙂

    Thanks for this nice distribution!

    Edit by Clem: No, Mint 17.3 KDE isn’t and won’t be upgradeable to Mint 18.

  29. I’ve upgraded followed the instructions, but the new mint-y theme is not available.

    Edit by Clem: You can type “apt install mint-y-theme mint-y-icons” to install it. We’ll add this to the next version of mintupgrade so this is done automatically.

  30. I was upgrading from 17.3 (MATE) to 18.0 (MATE) via these directions – https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2316 and it seemed to be going fine until the last message was “The user ‘syslog’ is already a member of ‘adm’. It stayed there for a long time. I let to continue overnight. The same message was there in the morning. I tried closing that terminal and starting mintupgrade upgrade. It stopped quickly. I rebooted and logged in fine. It looks like version 18 and almost everything seems to work. However, the GUI updater complained of a locked file. I went to the terminal and ran dpkg –configure -a. It looks to hang at the same spot. I did a CTRL-C to cancel and get “Setting up python3-xapian1.3 (1.3.4-0ubuntu1) …
    Setting up rsyslog (8.16.0-1ubuntu3) …
    The user `syslog’ is already a member of `adm’.
    ^Cdpkg: error processing package rsyslog (–configure):
    subprocess installed post-installation script was interrupted
    Setting up fonts-tlwg-sawasdee-ttf (1:0.6.2-2.1) …
    dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting:
    unable to install updated status of ‘fonts-tlwg-sawasdee-ttf’: No such file or directory”

    What should I do now?

    Edit by Clem: Hi John, try “apt install -f”, and retry “mintupgrade upgrade”. Pastebin the output if it doesn’t help.

  31. @CLEM:

    Here is the pastebin:

    http://pastebin.com/BaYYX0Nj

    THANKS!

    Edit by Clem: That looks ok. This is the output of “mintupgrade check”, which just checks/simulates the upgrade. It tells you there’s no issue here basically. A couple of removals, but they all look OK to me.

  32. Hi..Im upgrading from Rosa to Sarah..My question is: I have another partition for important files aside from boot,swap and root partition.. Does upgrading deletes that partition?..Thanks in advance.

    Edit by Clem: Upgrading doesn’t affect partitioning.

  33. I am very surprised this has been released. So many faulty implementations. Icons disappear, many programs need launching twice, desktop misbehaves, cannot find second monitor (sometimes) hangs up regularly. Close but no cigar, but please keep up the good work.

    Edit by Clem: Run the upgrade again and make sure you’re up to date. Focus on one issue at a time and troubleshoot it accurately.

  34. Can you tell me, which edition of mint will be guaranteed supported with future upgrades? I want to move away from KDE because of this but I want to be sure, that this wont happen again!
    Thanks! Is the Cinnamon build future-safe? (I mean for OS upgrades)

    Edit by Clem: That’s a legitimate question. Cinnamon is the most popular desktop, and it is developed by Linux Mint. The situation with KDE is quite different. It is developed upstream and we’ve no control over its direction. The KDE team (along with many KDE users) shifted their attention towards a new desktop which is Plasma 5. When it comes to other editions, all three of them (Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce) are conservative in their design and iterative in the way they improve. Reinventing the wheel is out of the question. The safest would be Cinnamon since it’s developed by Mint, then MATE where our developers represent almost half of the core team and the interest of the various distributions align very well, and then Xfce where we’re not involved in the development but which is quite modular and where the development pace is much slower (which is a good thing from a conservative point of view).

  35. Like comment nr 9 i have problem with libsane.
    Preparing to unpack …/libsane-common_1.0.25+git20150528-1ubuntu2_all.deb …
    dpkg-query: package ‘libsane-common’ is not installed
    Use dpkg –info (= dpkg-deb –info) to examine archive files,
    and dpkg –contents (= dpkg-deb –contents) to list their contents.
    Unpacking libsane-common (1.0.25+git20150528-1ubuntu2) over (1.0.23-3ubuntu3.1) …
    dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/libsane-common_1.0.25+git20150528-1ubuntu2_all.deb (–unpack):
    trying to overwrite ‘/etc/sane.d/hp.conf’, which is also in package libsane:amd64 1.0.23-3ubuntu3.1
    dpkg-deb: error: subprocess paste was killed by signal (Broken pipe)
    Preparing to unpack …/libsane_1.0.25+git20150528-1ubuntu2_amd64.deb …
    Unpacking libsane:amd64 (1.0.25+git20150528-1ubuntu2) over (1.0.23-3ubuntu3.1) …
    Preparing to unpack …/hplip_3.16.3+repack0-1_amd64.deb …
    Unpacking hplip (3.16.3+repack0-1) over (3.15.2-0trusty4.1) …
    Preparing to unpack …/python3-virtkey_0.63.0-0ubuntu5_amd64.deb …
    Unpacking python3-virtkey (0.63.0-0ubuntu5) over (0.63.0-0ubuntu3) …
    Preparing to unpack …/libwebpmux1_0.4.4-1_amd64.deb …
    Unpacking libwebpmux1:amd64 (0.4.4-1) over (0.4.0-4) …
    Preparing to unpack …/python3-pil_3.1.2-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb …
    Unpacking python3-pil:amd64 (3.1.2-0ubuntu1) over (2.3.0-1ubuntu3) …
    Preparing to unpack …/libgirepository-1.0-1_1.46.0-3ubuntu1_amd64.deb …
    Unpacking libgirepository-1.0-1:amd64 (1.46.0-3ubuntu1) over (1.40.0-1ubuntu0.2) …
    Preparing to unpack …/python3-gi_3.20.0-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb …
    Unpacking python3-gi (3.20.0-0ubuntu1) over (3.12.0-1ubuntu1) …
    Preparing to unpack …/python3-gi-cairo_3.20.0-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb …
    Unpacking python3-gi-cairo (3.20.0-0ubuntu1) over (3.12.0-1ubuntu1) …
    Processing triggers for man-db (2.6.7.1-1ubuntu1) …
    Processing triggers for mime-support (3.54ubuntu1.1) …
    Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.10.1-0ubuntu2) …
    Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.22-1ubuntu1) …
    Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.13-1) …
    Errors were encountered while processing:
    /var/cache/apt/archives/libsane-common_1.0.25+git20150528-1ubuntu2_all.deb
    E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

    ————————————————
    !! ERROR: Failed to upgrade some of the packages. Please review the error message, use APT to fix the situation and try again.
    !! Exiting.
    ————————————————

    Any idea how to fix? And what will happen if i will restart my PC after such unfinished upgrade? Is it safe to restart if upgrade stops in place like this?

    Edit by Clem: Hi, you need to fix the situation. Try “apt install -f” to see if it can resolve it, or remove libsane if it helps. Also once the situation is solved, do run mintupgrade upgrade again to proceed with the upgrade.

  36. I have steam installed. Would steam be deleted?

    Edit by Clem: Probably not, but mintupgrade check will tell you anyway.

  37. I have upgraded Mint Rosa to Mint Sarah on a test machine with somes speciality :
    Lowlatency or RT kernel’s
    Audio devoluted system.

    No problem’s, all go right.

    Thanks and best regards to your team

  38. Mint 17.3 Cinnamon 64 bits: The update failed on me halfway. Now my network connection refuses to work (“The system network services are not compatible with this version”), but “mintupgrade upgrade” refuses to work again without downloading additional files. Could anyone help?

    Edit by Clem: Did you perform a mintupgrade download first? It shouldn’t need any more download then during the “upgrade” step.

  39. I tried the upgrade but in the end a fresh install worked much better. Too many errors and wonky behaviour w/upgrade. With the exception of having to use a Debian work around for Google Earth and a small issue with Cairo Dock { no alternate theme install}. Everything is running smoothly. Even VLC is playing 265 compression natively.
    18 is smooth, fast and elegant. Good work everyone.

  40. I ran the upgrade from 17.3 and it worked pretty well, first try. I got this error several times, but it went through anyway:

    “Got a SIGABRT while executing native code. This usually indicates
    a fatal error in the mono runtime or one of the native libraries
    used by your application.”

    The only thing I’ve found so far that hasn’t been mentioned above is really minor – blueberry didn’t install, and I had to go get it manually.

  41. Thank you very very much Clem and the whole Mint team. I totally respect your awesome work!

    @all: I recommend to backup your .home dir and do a clean install instead, if you use a complex configuration….

  42. I found one more problem with my installation. When I logged in, the speakers always started muted, and I had to go into the sound settings and manually unmute them.

    I ran this in the terminal, and it is now working as I expect (saves the settings from the previous time).

    sudo dpkg-reconfigure alsa-base

  43. Hi, I am trying to install Netflix-desktop on Linux Mint 18 and it does not seem to work. I had no problem with it on LM 17.3
    Can somebody help?
    Thank you,
    Val

  44. Clem, the number of users asking for info on Mint 18 KDE takes me back to a recurring question: does the Mint team plan to sustain the strategy to offer several desktop environment (DE) choices – currently covering Cinnamon, Mate, KDE and XFCE – and afford the amount of work related? I presume you have data (accurate or estimate) on DE preference among Mint users. Does the share justify the offer of four options? I would really like to see a post detailing how the Mint team envisions supported DEs in the future, particularly in light of some recent initiatives like Neon. Thank you!

  45. I got this errors running “mintupgrade upgrade” :

    Se encontraron errores al procesar:
    /var/cache/apt/archives/libsane-common_1.0.25+git20150528-1ubuntu2_all.deb
    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: Tal vez quiera ejecutar «apt-get update» para corregir estos problemas
    E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

    Running “apt-get update” gives the same errors.

    Can someone help me?

    Thanks

    Edit by Clem: Try to remove libsane-common and retry the upgrade.

  46. Just my opinion, but Clem’s statement about “if ain’t broke” is exactly why I feel Linux is great as opposed to other popular Op Systems. Users are NOT forced or coerced into making a jump until we are ready or at least we are given a massive grace period. Cheers on the Release and thanks for the upgrade tips!

  47. Hello Linux Mint Team,

    At first congratulations for such a good piece of software you delivered.

    I upgraded my Fujitsu ESPRIMO Mpbile M9410 (4GB RAM/128GB SSD) today from 17.3 cinnamon 64bit to the new SARAH 18 following the instructions given on the project-website.
    Everything runs perfect on this Laptop and I am totally happy to have this Masterpiece as backbone on it with a modern design,an actual Linux kernel and Long-time-support, as this machine was designed for XP years ago.
    I upgraded the regular 2GB and replaced the original 160GB HDD with an cheap SSD and run Linux Mint on it without any problem since LM17 Qiana that makes it a fast and reliable unit for every day business.

    After the upgrade I could not find the MINT-Y-Themes after because they were not pre-installed inside the “Themes”. But after thinking over it is clear when something is missing it is in the repositories and can be installed via the software manager. So at the end my system is as I like to have it with Mint-Y and it is running perfect!

    Thanks a lot!

  48. The only issue I see so far is that the ntpd daemon stops and starts a number of times at bootup, and causes a small delay in getting to the login screen. These seem to be systemd-related messages. Is there a mechanism for editing systemd entries, and should I try taking ntpd out, if I can?

  49. @Clem: So, I can upgrade then? What do I remove (or is that done in the upgrade?) And, what about the abort? I assumed that all meant I couldn’t upgrade.

    Edit by Clem: No no, this all means there’s no apparent issue, the check is successful.

  50. Performed the upgrade, no issues had showed up on the check, but the upgraded system was replete with problems, e.g no Mint-Y themes showed up in settings, the “Shutdown” panel applet didn’t work, the launcher for Audacity launched Skype etc. I didn’t bother to document all the issues as there were so many I quickly decided to bin the upgraded system and go for a fresh install.

    The fresh install works perfectly and, as I have a separate, untouched, Home partition it was very quick and straightforward to configure.

    Mint 18 is terrific, definitely the best yet (thanks very much btw!), but from my perspective the upgrade was a waste of time, far more straightforward just to go for a fresh install.

    Machine used was an Asus K54L.

  51. I got an error:

    Unpacking libde265-0:amd64 (1.0.2-2) …
    dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/libde265-0_1.0.2-2_amd64.deb (–unpack):
    trying to overwrite ‘/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libde265.so.0.0.10’, which is also in package libde265:amd64 1.0.2-1ppa1~trusty1.1

    Any idea how to fix this? apt install -f doesn’t fix the problem.

    Edit by Clem: Remove the offending package (libde265).

  52. The upgrade attempt (mintupgrade 17.3.8) on my desktop was an unmitigated disaster. The check phase did not return any issues, so I proceeded to perform the real upgrade (after a full image backup, of course).

    About 600 packages into the installation, the upgrade aborted with an error message indicating that libde265.so.0.0.10 could not be installed due to a broken pipe and the sandbox user _apt not being valid.

    Further, install-docs returned a ton of error messages.

    Fixing the issue with apt -f install did not help, the system was left behind with a broken package database, 1600 packages not upgraded and some core programs like aptitude no longer working.

    I gave up at that point and restored my backup. So back to Mint 17.3 for now. I guess I will wait another couple of months for the upgrade process to mature and then either retry the upgrade or do a clean install of Mint 18.

    DO HAVE A BACKUP – it cannot be emphasized enough. For situations like this, having a full image backup (i.e. through Clonezilla) is your best and quickest recovery option.

  53. @rodel: That is exactly the same error that I got (plus the install-docs and user thing).

    If my upgrade attempt was any indication, you may need that backup right about now…

  54. Clem –
    Many, many thanks for all the hard work from you and your crew!

    I prefer the KDE edition, so I am going to wait for the new Mint KDE 18 Edition to be polished and released. Then will backup, and install the new Plasma 5.

    I have been a very happy Linux Mint user since around version 9. I always have been satisfied and always recommend that new Linux users give Mint a try. I have many games that work on Linux on my system, either natively or via wine, and haven’t felt any need to return to using Windows at home in a long time.

  55. I am currently using Linux Mint 17.3 KDE and would like to go to Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon. If I back up my files using 17.3 KDE will I be able to restore them after I switch to Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon and will my partitions be preserved? I am assuming that in order to upgrade, I would have to do a clean install of Cinnamon.
    I tried Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon in a VM and tend to like it but could not figure out how to put icons on the desktop. Is there an easy way to do that?

    Thank you.

  56. Hi Clem. Re your comments for #33 & #41 above, can you please clarify the Mint KDE 18 status for me? I am perfectly happy if i cannot upgrade my 17.3 KDE to 18 KDE, as i’d already decided to get to 18 via a clean install. However, reading your comments worries me that maybe you are saying there will NEVER be a Mint 18 KDE. Pls tell me i am panicking for nothing.

  57. thank you for this update but i have the kde version of linux mint 17.3 i can’t upgrade-it to 18 kde
    so what is the new update do you include to the new linux mint 18 ?
    and what is the version of kde you include it to this version ?

  58. I ran through the upgrade on an old vaio FE21h, everything looked good, took about 90 mins on a wifi, at the end it said “Done,done”.

    On reboot I had a kernel panic, rebooted a few times, tried to deal with the panic, in the end I spent another 30 mins installing a fresh copy of 18, works great.

    Many thanks for all your work guys.

  59. In place went well except:

    Had to re-run mintupgrade scripts due to errors. Looped so many times: I think I grub-config ran like 20 times!

    Once I hammered out the errors manually with dpkg, things installed smoother, seemed to plow through, albeit circular.

    Outstanding GUI bug: Mate Netspeed app’s font are invisible in Blue-Submarine, Green-Submarine, and BlackMate control themes.

    Virtualbox needed to be reinstalled (was done automatically but didnt work)

    Had to hack manually the dconf-editor so MATE wouldnt go crazy and hog CPU.

    Mate-Y themes missing! (manually installed)

  60. Hi Clem,

    I’m running a fresh install of 18 MATE while keeping 17.3 on a separate drive. I noticed minor bugs but it’s running very well apart from that. Thank you for an excellent desktop and laptop OS.

    Where should we report bugs in LM 18?

  61. Clem,

    Thanks for the jump upgrade instructions from 17.3 to 18. For my main box, I choose to stay with 17.3, very solid build — rock solid. Did a fresh install of Cinnamon 18 on my “play” laptop and all went perfect. Thanks to the team for the hard work.

    Bill

  62. I think it was a mistake of the Ubuntu team to exclude from the repositories of 16.04 xenial, the openjdk-7 packages! Openjdk-7 is an active project and unfortunately, there is no backwards compatibility in openjdk-8 even if a java project uses common classes. Since I did a clean installation of LM 18, I’m not sure if the openjdk-7 packages would preserved if I had simply upgraded from LM 17.3 but I suppose they wouldn’t. Now I have to use ppas to do the job and I despise ppas because usually they are outdated (or untrusted). Is there a chance to restore the old good openjdk-7 packages into the new LM 18 repositories ? Clem: do you know what are the Ubuntu team’s plans about this? I am sure there are many others (especially programmers) who complain about this.

    Otherwise LM 18 is simply superb!!!
    Thx

  63. @Clem
    nice tutorial
    You should add somewhere that you need a massive amount of free space in the / partition.
    Yes, it failed for me, it ran out of space.
    as an experiment I used Gparted to grow the / to have about 15GB of free space, reinstalled M17.3 (recycling my /home), updated it, and tried again.
    It hung on the “configuring libssl1.0.0:amd64”
    I can and will make a fresh install of M18 (mate)
    thanks

  64. @Clem (45)

    Yes, I followed the steps and performed “mintupgrade download” several times first to make sure. However, during the upgrade process itself there was a dependency error concerning gconf2, which blocked the upgrade. I tried “dpkg –configure -a”several times, which eventually suggested that I restart the computer as soon as possible.

    I rebooted the computer, and after that the network wouldn’t work anymore, and trying to launch “mintupgrade upgrade” again failed every time due to being unable to download files.

    (I ended up performing a clean install)

  65. Hi! I have this error when I try to update:

    Se encontraron errores al procesar:
    /var/cache/apt/archives/ffmpeg_7%3a2.8.6-1ubuntu2_i386.deb
    E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

    ————————————————
    !! ERROR: Failed to upgrade some of the packages. Please review the error message, use APT to fix the situation and try again.
    !! Exiting.

    I tried to solve this by using apt install -f but the problem continues and shows this:

    Preparando para desempaquetar …/ffmpeg_7%3a2.8.6-1ubuntu2_i386.deb …
    Desempaquetando ffmpeg (7:2.8.6-1ubuntu2) …
    dpkg: error al procesar el archivo /var/cache/apt/archives/ffmpeg_7%3a2.8.6-1ubuntu2_i386.deb (–unpack):
    intentando sobreescribir `/usr/bin/ffmpeg’, que está también en el paquete clipgrab 3.6.1~trusty1
    dpkg-deb: error: el subproceso copiado fue terminado por la señal (Tubería rota)
    Se encontraron errores al procesar:
    /var/cache/apt/archives/ffmpeg_7%3a2.8.6-1ubuntu2_i386.deb
    E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

    there any way to solve this problem? thank you very much

    Edit by Clem: “apt remove clipgrab” and then try again.

  66. I upgraded two machines, one with Cinnamon and one with Mate.

    On the Cinnamon machine, the upgrade stalled due to libde265 and related packages but went fine after removing them. The machine has a more complicated sound setup with JACK, but no problems so far. Only gripe is that synching Evolution via Google doesn’t work anymore. Probably the GNOME online accounts stuff got removed or something.

    Upgrade of the Mate machine went through. Afterwards I had to remove a second swap partition from fstab that doesn’t exist any more and was commented out before the upgrade.

    I like the new Mint Y theme. Since my preferred theme Boje Red doesn’t work correctly with the new GTK3 any more, I switched to Mint Y for now.

  67. I am attempting to upgrade on a Toshiba Satellite L775 with CORE i3 processor. I am getting the errors listed in “https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TJDdyPAv_BINLsUCM2Aema3mAmA5ubmJW7_T_E7ycYw”. This appears to be getting deep into the Mint internals, so thought I would report it.

    Getting an error with gconf, and also some regex formatting issues and no support for locale en_US.utf8.

    Google drive is the only good way I had to share the data and I had to format in Google Docs. I can email or do another way if you prefer.

  68. cont’d above as X (me):

    so far, only other issue is suspend seems to take longer than before.

    I’m mighty impressed. This is quality stuff, nothing this complex is perfect but wow I was correct back in 1994 when I had faith in Linux, but really I was only just hanging by a thread, back then Slackware was impossible to install even after a zillion retries, but damn its taken this long to get here, holy hell I’m old now!! Wish Mint Team existed a decade or two earlier. Finally the way Linux “should be” instead of the haphazard poorly documented cryptic disconnected hackware of yesteryears.

    Mint came to my attention in 2012, it stood out as Ubuntu choked.

    Kudos to Mint Team, very professional and thorough. Even Apple bricks stuff and backdoors are everywhere so one breach isnt reflective of the team’s abilities. This team deserves credit, better/slicker than Ubuntu, better than desktop and commercial OS’s.

  69. I’m sticking to your advice and not upgrading while I don’t feel the need. However, I would like to ask about the support till 2019. Which packages does it concern? And do you plan for backporting some packages from LM 18? Thanks.

    Edit by Clem: New features or versions won’t be backported. The support consists in security fixes going forward.

  70. Upgrade didn’t work for me. It went pretty far, but it aborted when one of the downloads failed. Then terminal didn’t respond, and Nemo didn’t work at all. I rebooted to recover, and the whole system was hosed. I had to download a copy of 18 on another computer and install from the live boot.

  71. My upgrade from 17.3 to 18 went well, following all the good advice on this blog.
    Thank you Clem for all your efforts!
    However I have been left with a problem of slow boot-up time, more than twice as long as usual.
    The tweaking of Startup Application didn’t do much.
    It seems to hang for quiet a while in the middle of booting and then there is a lot of hard drive activity towards the end.
    I might have to do another backup and clean install.

    Edit by Clem: “systemd-analyze critical-chain” to identify what takes time. “sudo systemctl list-dependencies –reverse foobar” to list foobar’s dependencies (i.e. the reason it’s called at boot time). When you remove something, make sure you purge it.

  72. Ok I have upgraded my production machine.

    All go right…but somes tricks
    1) I use Dolibarr and the upgrade remove them. With Synaptic it’s unable to re install (Xenial problem I guess).
    2) Apache2 and mysql after upgrade must be completely re installed. This because systemd introduce some other paradigm I guess.
    3) some old development with gambas3 qt4 must be adapted because qt5 libs
    4) There are inaccurate mail messages given by cron about php sessionclean. Really annoying. I dont know how to stop this.
    5) if you use additional package from KxStudio some warning occurs about the key of repository. Is only warning, not an error. KxStudio is about to resolve this fact.
    But in summary all is ok

  73. When running mintupgrade check, I see the same warnings as Daniel (post 53) reports:
    “W: Unknown Multi-Arch type ‘no’ …”
    and
    “W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp ….”

    These appear to relate to python, php, pypy, compiz, kwin & libxapian.

    However, during check I don’t see any Errors.

    Should I be concerned? Will these cause problems for the upgrade?

    I have booted a live usb 18 image and that appears to run without problems.

    Edit by Clem: These are fine. They correct themselves post-upgrade.

  74. Thanks Clem for all the good work. Here are some experiences from my upgrade process that might help other users:

    I followed the description step by step. After 500 packages the upgrade process stopped. I had to run a “apt-get -f install” and then a “mintupgrade upgrade” again. I had to this at three different times in the process. And I had to remove some kde packages before the last mintupgrade could perform the last tasks correctly.

    The next problem that I after installing the nvidia-drivers my xserver did not start again. First after I removed bumblebee and bumblebee-nvidia – which I had forgotten about – everything worked as expected.

    Keep up the good work Clem

  75. I successfully updated my laptop with ease and now my desktop.. although there were some hiccups with the desktop. After updating, my console still said 17.3 and not 18, so I updated again. A few more files were added and now all seems ok.

    I do have one
    issue. I know that fglrx is not supported. When desktop boots, it shows the logon screen on the wrong monitor. Once logged in, the other monitor takes over as primary. I attempted to create and xorg.conf using “X -configure” at the console. This returns an error that there are no devices to configure. Configuration failed. I verified my graphic cards are recognized via LSPCI. Under the driver section, the cards are not shown at all, only the AMD processor driver.

    Is this normal?

  76. Actually, a really important reason for me to upgrade is that there is almost no recent version of software available for the Ubuntu 14.04 base. Installing dependencies for software is often really painful, mostly spending time on finding PPAs with updated software. So I’m glad that an upgrade will be possible! (once the KDE edition will be released)

  77. Linux Mint 13 is stuck with an old version of Chromium Browser, one that has a very serious bug that won’t let me make SSL (secure) connections to certain websites, Google most notably. My siblings also can’t go onto Facebook either using the latest version of Chromium that’s available under Mint 13. Will this be fixed before Mint 13’s end-of-life?

  78. The upgrade went well. Openoffice now works thanks to the bug fix in Mint18’s version of xorg.

    I have noticed the boot time seems a little longer

    systemd-analyze critical-chain

    graphical.target @53.098s
    └─multi-user.target @53.098s
    └─smbd.service @52.259s +838ms
    └─nmbd.service @47.971s +3.043s
    └─network-online.target @47.947s
    └─NetworkManager-wait-online.service @39.875s +8.070s
    └─NetworkManager.service @33.287s +6.572s
    └─dbus.service @25.141s
    └─basic.target @24.961s
    └─sockets.target @24.961s
    └─cups.socket @24.961s
    └─sysinit.target @24.894s
    └─systemd-update-utmp.service @24.715s +171ms
    └─systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service @23.395s +1.304s
    └─local-fs.target @21.678s
    └─run-cgmanager-fs.mount @33.301s
    └─local-fs-pre.target @12.094s
    └─systemd-remount-fs.service @11.719s +374ms
    └─systemd-journald.socket @4.308s
    └─-.slice @4.291s

    ps
    I thought smaba had been removed from LM18

  79. Hi! In the page “How to upgrade to Linux Mint 18”, the section “C. Requirements” is missing the requirements informations.

  80. when i try to change the theme icons using preferences > appearance > mint-y
    there is a yellow warning “this theme will not look as intended because the required GTK+ theme engine ‘adwaita’ is not installed”
    but when i checked at software manager, the adwaita is already installed. so how to remove that yello warning?

  81. Smooth upgrade on an Acer Aspire 4745 (Core i3). No problem whatsoever, and it seems to have solved an erratic screen problem I got when changing to 17.3, months ago.

    Thanks a lot!

  82. My system would not boot after the errors reported previously. I downloaded the ISO, copied off the few files I needed and installed from the ISO. Looks good! Thanks.

  83. Upgraded on Friday. I have seen no problems with the install other than Mint-y theme does not get installed when you upgrade. This is easily solved by just downloading it in the package manager. I really like the new version. Thanks for the hard work. Now off to make a donation because you deserve it!

  84. @Appoloin: Samba is just not installed by default in Mint 18, that is, when you do a clean install from ISO. It’s still present in Ubuntu repos.
    Guess it’s not auto-removed from the system when upgrading from 17.3…

  85. I wrote an answer to help 91 rkmugen with 3 links contains information regarding his problem, but is still blocked.

  86. I upgraded from 17.3 to 18 and it went fine; no problems to report.

    Thank you for taking the time to create the upgrade tool, write the documentation, and respond to everyone’s questions. It’s greatly appreciated.

    One request for future versions of Cinnamon: allow the font size in the menu and on the panel to be user-configurable (e.g. the same as the desktop font).

    Looking forward to what you’re going to do with KDE and Plasma 5.

  87. I built myself a new PC out of a combination of brand new parts, and parts recycled from my previous computer. Luckily for me, The latest Linux Mint 18 Sarah was available by the time I had acquired all of the parts and finished building it.

    The first thing I noticed going wrong was when I would right click on a menu entry causing it to go blank as the cursor hovered over it, so I couldn’t see the entry anymore.

    The next thing I noticed wrong was when I used VMware Workstation and experienced graphics problems and freezing.

    The third thing I noticed wrong was with VLC media player was the lack of the usual file manager when clicking on browse to try and launch a mounted .iso and found it wasn’t listed on the side pane. I also noticed graphical lag when using the slider to go back and forth along the track as sound played while the picture was stuck for a few seconds. On top of this, it would even freeze up completely and VLC would become unresponsive.

    All of these issues were gone when I reformatted my hard drive and reverted back to using Linux Mint 17.3 which I had on my previous computer. The only possible explanation I can think of was that Linux Mint 18 Sarah must have some memory leaks or something. As the author of this blog says: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

  88. @#96 and #98, I don’t think I’ll wait for Mint 13’s EOL after all, I’ll be installing Mint 18 within this week (when time permits). Considering that Chromium under Ubuntu 12.04 (of which Mint 13 is based), basically hasn’t been touched since last year, I have little choice but to move on up. While I’m aware that I could still use an updated Firefox, I prefer to use Firefox for certain sites, and then use Chromium for other certain sites (mostly social media and YouTube)…. so that my Google searches on Firefox won’t mingle with my social media and YouTube account(s).

  89. Font viewer did not start from the Menue after the upgrade.
    I solved it by the method given by “cybernaut” with post “247.” in response on “Linux Mint 18 “Sarah” Cinnamon released!”.

  90. I’m fine now with 17.3. Will it be possible, in 2019, to upgrade directly to 18.x? Or to 18 and then, by Update Manager, to 18.x?

    Edit by Clem: Yes.

  91. OK, for those panicking over KDE… (I want KDE 18 too!)

    There will be Mint 18 for both XFCE and KDE.
    There is no intention to drop support for KDE. That has been made clear across a number of posts.
    In terms of numbers, in the last survey KDE had more users in Mint than XFCE, though Mint is something of a ‘GNOME’ house and the only two DE’s directly controlled by Mint are Cinnamon and Mate.
    Once the Cinnamon and Mate versions are released the code then goes into OTHER developers hands who specialise in KDE and XFCE for Mint respectively. So there is a delay of AT LEAST a month before release of a Beta and it could well be longer. The KDE and XFCE teams have to work with the code Clem and co. have put together after their work is complete and KDE and XFCE are not coded directly by the Mint team – though it’s unusual for a distro to directly code a DE anyway.

    Note that KDE is shifting to a completely different code base from QT 4 to QT5 and, thus, from Plasma 4 to Plasma. This means there is no method for an upgrade only complete wipe and re-install. I get that.

    I don’t know if Clem would even be able to say what rendering of KDE will be implemented in 18. It’s not in control of the KDE code base in the way he is with Cinnamon and Mate.
    In various posts the betting is KDE 5.5 in Mint 18 in line with Kubuntu 16.04. I would be surprised if this were not the case.

    But… for those willing to take the chance there will be packports to Kubuntu which are very likely to work with Mint but would not be endorsed by Mint.

    Furthermore, there is a rough six months in between point versions so if Plasma 5.5 is supplied with Mint 18.0 there is a fair chance just six months later that there will be a release of 18.1 with Plasma 5.7.
    [Of course, if people want cutting edge KDE they should go Neon. I don’t. I just want KDE + the QT 5 framework so I can get Kdenlive updates and keep KDE!]

    I’ll probably be OK with 5.5 because the functionality I need in KDE is clearly defined and in 5.5. I just need a rendering of 5.5 or above and the QT 5 libraries to work.

    [It would also be good if I could install Cinnamon alongside KDE. It doesn’t work in 17.x but I could do with features from both desktops.]
    Anyway, no reason to panic.

    KDE is going through a fast development phase right now as the KDE developers are moving everything over from 4 (not there yet but getting close in 5.7 as I understand it) and trying to get in with convergence. But, like KDE 4, it should settle down.
    KDE is not being dropped in Mint. Plasma 5.x will be in 18 but Clem can’t tell us what rendering – I am guessing 5.5 to match Kubuntu but it could be that the Mint KDE team are testing to see what holds together.

    If I have any of the above WRONG (I am just a user and not part of the Mint dev team in any way) then Clem, I am sure, can and will correct me.

  92. Did a clean cinnamon install to a spare HDD on my ASUS A54H Core i3 and it completed without incident and worked flawlessly. Suitably encouraged, when the upgrade path was made available, I performed the upgrade to the SSD that is normally in this machine. The upgrade went without incident but soon it became apparent that boot time was longer and overall performance was a bit down. I then bit the bullet and did a clean install to the SSD with an immediate improvement in performance and stability. I don’t doubt that with time and assistance the issues I had in upgrading could be identified and addressed but for me the clean install was the better option this time.

  93. @57 update – I was able to speed up the boot process by doing a

    systemctl disable networkmanager-wait-online.service

    I checked afterward to make sure that ntpd and the NetworkManager itself were still working, which they were.

    I understand that this may cause other networking issues, but I also note that in another distro, this service is not enabled, and I have had no network issues there for many months.

  94. Hello, we happily use at my company Mint 17.3 KDE edition, for most workstations and PCs. For a while it will be okay, but I’m quite disappointed no upgrade path beyond wiping everything and reinstalling it all seems planned to be able to upgrade to Mint 18 KDE.
    I understand that KDE changed a lot from v4.x (Mint 17) to v5.y (Mint 18). But why should it prevent to upgrade from Mint17 to 18? An upgrade to Mint 18 could be launched and mostly performed in text mode for example if the graphical layer is an issue. That way no need to reinstall all our PCs, bothering end-users, etc.
    I understand that a full reinstall may be safer and sometimes easier, but it’s ok for 1 PC at home in geek mode, not for many PCs at work with unhappy end-users.
    Any idea about that? Am I a lonely sysadmin with Mint 17 KDE machines or is there other dudes around with the same problem?
    I vote for being able to also upgrade Mint KDE 17.3 PCs to Mint 18!
    What do you think about that?
    Thx.

  95. Mint 17.2 was my entrance door to the Linux world about a year ago. Started with MATE, then tried Cinnamon but as I wanted to have my workspace fully customized and optimized (we’re Linux, right?), I shifted to KDE, migrating thereafter to Mint 17.3 KDE. When Plasma 5 got some traction, I tried virtually every instance of it I could find: Kubuntu (15.10 and 16.04), Fedora (23 and 24), openSuse (Leap and Tumbleweed), and recently the spartan Neon (5.6 and 5.7). Plasma 5 was in all of them – without exception – buggy and unstable. Lots of freezes and crashes have led me to the perception that some pressure to launch Plasma 5 may have driven the KDE team to accelerate its introduction at the expense of quality and stability. I continue to use Mint 17.3 with KDE 4, and am still amazed at its robustness. Definitely the best distro/desktop combination I’ve ever used. I’m quite sure the Mint team is doing its best to polish Mint 18 KDE as much as possible, something other distros seem to have not done. Hopefully the wait will be paid off – looking forward to Mint 18 KDE!

  96. The upgrade on my system was clean. So far the only inconveniences are having to re-install my repo’s and ppa’s, and re-install the user extension packs in my VirtualBox virtual machines.

  97. Upgraded from 17.3 to 18 and it took best part of three hours. It Spent much of the time repeatedly reiterating and re-investigating my Lenovo T410 hardware and then rebuilding grub slowly each time. Very slow boot up with a characteristic 2 min 30 second “plymouth” delay.

    Once running after the prolonged boot-up, Linux Mint 18 is impressive and I think a genuine credit to its authors. Over time and more recently it is becoming more user friendly which enables me to instruct other older windows weary users to install Linux distros without me having to do it all for them. I do realise that the effort to achieve this is formidable.

    This 8GB ram machine has no Windows but does have tree versions of Linux, and a large common NTFS partition.

    Genuinely grateful for a much improving Linux Mint 18 x64 after perservering with its various setups over about 13 years.

  98. For the people getting stuck on libde265 errors while upgrading: after you get that error, run:
    sudo dpkg –configure -a

    This will configure that packages that have been installed successfully already, and will end in an error regarding libde265 or one of the packages that depends on it.

    Next, force-install the new libde265 package:
    sudo dpkg -i –force-overwrite /var/cache/apt/archives/libde265-0_1.0.2-2_amd64.deb

    Finally, continue the upgrade process:
    1) install the rest of the packages that had been queued already (should finish without errors now)
    sudo apt-get -f install
    2) continue the upgrade process
    sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -o Dpkg::Options::=”–force-confnew”

    I based this way of resolving the problem on the information in https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=225717#p1190527 and https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1930919&p=11715247#post11715247

    After that, the installation went fine.

    These problems probably only occur if you installed a newer version of VLC via a ppa under Linux Mint 17. Therefore, an alternative method may be to (temporarily) uninstall VLC before upgrading, but that it no longer possible if you already started the upgrade (in which case the above should help you work around the problems).

  99. Hi sir, can i know if flash player is integreted in linux mint 18 cinnamon like in linux mint 17.3 and is there vlc ? i’m asking because i didn’t find these in the beta version.

  100. I know that the Mint team are working like dogs right now to iron out all the bugs but 18.1 will be the one to look for imo. 17.3 is running on all my comps and is truly a masterpiece. There is no point of risking importing new bugs in it. I hope there will be a 18.1 port as well.

  101. This is a particularly nasty upgrade. I’m glad I tried it out on VirtualBox first. Thanks for your efforts, guys!

  102. I upgraded from 17.3 for one reason alone, namely that after booting up, my cursor freezes and I have to shut down by means of the reset button or power switch. I have to do this perhaps two or three times, and ditto with 18 but if I leave the pc on all the time, it never happens and everything works flawlessly. Strange but not the end of the world ! I use a normal corded USB mouse, by the way.

  103. Further to my previous posting, it looks like Ctrl Alt Backspace may be a better option than more brutal shutdowns.

  104. Running LM18 with an AMD graphic card and thus without proprietary drivers is not the best idea, Steam is not working, tearing is an issue, performance is bad. I actually love the new look and Mint Y though, so my question is: can I roll back to 17.3 and have Cinnamon 3 and Mint Y theme?

  105. Hello –
    I tried the upgrade on a previous 17.3 install – it worked more or less OK –

    [Note: When performing mintupgrade check – it says it will remove package ‘cinnamon’ – it may be normal, but I asked myself some questions… hopefully it reinstalls automatically meta-packages (including ‘cinnamon’) afterwards]

    I still have issues with boot time – huge delay again (2min) – but this time not caused by rc.local (see http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3035#comment-130985)

    Here is the log for what it’s worth –

    [code]
    ul 18 21:49:20 yquux mdm[1561]: WARNING: mdm_cleanup_children: Slave crashed, killing its children
    Jul 18 21:49:20 yquux systemd[1623]: Reached target Shutdown.
    Jul 18 21:49:20 yquux systemd[1]: Stopping Session c1 of user mobutu.
    Jul 18 21:49:20 yquux systemd[1]: Stopping Console Manager…
    Jul 18 21:49:20 yquux systemd[1]: Stopped target Sound Card.
    Jul 18 21:31:32 yquux rsyslogd: message repeated 2 times: [ [origin software=”rsyslogd” swVersion=”8.16.0″ x-pid=”907″ x-info=”http://www.rsyslog.com”] rsyslogd was HUPed]
    Jul 18 21:49:20 yquux rsyslogd: [origin software=”rsyslogd” swVersion=”8.16.0″ x-pid=”907″ x-info=”http://www.rsyslog.com”] exiting on signal 15.
    Jul 18 21:51:45 yquux rsyslogd: [origin software=”rsyslogd” swVersion=”8.16.0″ x-pid=”3013″ x-info=”http://www.rsyslog.com”] start
    Jul 18 21:51:45 yquux systemd-modules-load[1216]: Inserted module ‘lp’
    Jul 18 21:51:45 yquux rsyslogd-2222: command ‘KLogPermitNonKernelFacility’ is currently not permitted – did you already set it via a RainerScript command (v6+ config)? [v8.16.0 try http://www.rsyslog.com/e/2222 ]
    Jul 18 21:51:45 yquux rsyslogd: rsyslogd’s groupid changed to 104
    Jul 18 21:51:45 yquux rsyslogd: rsyslogd’s userid changed to 101
    Jul 18 21:51:45 yquux systemd-modules-load[1216]: Inserted module ‘ppdev’
    [/code]

    [systemd-analyze critical-chain output is not so clear to me]
    [the rsyslog seems to be already a bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/rsyslog/+bug/1531622%5D

    Yquux

  106. I had dependency issues with Kde applications (not the actual desktop), texlive packages and compiz pagkages in mint cinnamon.

    apt-get -f install did not help. Even though it cleaned other packages it could not fix texlive and compiz dependency issues. Basically the upgrade broke most related packages. I must urge people that do not have a relatively vanilla installation to not do try the upgrade.

  107. I did a fresh install of Mint 18, and everything is Ok. There was only a bug in video when using two screens (the region bellow the cursor blinks when the cursor switch to the other screen – and vice-versa), anyway, nothing serious. It was solved by a kernel update (I compiled and updated to kernel 4.6.4). Just for let you guys know, if some one are facing the same bug.
    Congratulations to the Linux Mint team! I’ve been using it since vesion 11… It is a very good system.
    Cheers

  108. I encountered this error while actually upgrading..
    /var/cache/apt/archives/libde265-0_1.0.2-2_amd64.deb
    E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

    I then ran apt install -f
    and the result was…
    Errors were encountered while processing:
    /var/cache/apt/archives/libde265-0_1.0.2-2_amd64.deb
    W: No sandbox user ‘_apt’ on the system, can not drop privileges
    E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

    I believe I can remove the package concerned, and reinstall it after the upgrade….what is the command to do that ?…and to restart the upgrade do I go back to mintupgrade upgrade….and allow it to start again…??

    Brian

  109. Hey people,

    I suggest to you that you upgrade by doing a fresh install. It’s a whole jump to another base (Ubuntu 14.04 to 16.04), please bear that in mind when you upgrade Linux Mint. A lot of things have changed in Ubuntu, too. It’s only natural that errors can appear here and there.
    I would only upgrade using the update manager if it is absolutely necessary.

    Clem, I want to say a big thank you to you and your team, LM 17 was and is working absolutely amazing on my machine here. Each point release was a real improvement and made things better and better. I am a very happy user and will maybe only upgrade to <18 in 2019 because I learned Linux so well using your distro, that I already feel confident enough for making the direct jump to debian on my other machines, which are primarily still running the major californian operating systems.

    Without Linux Mint, that would never have been possible!

    When you upgrade the LMDE version, please take a look at this wiki page of debian and please implement it the same way: https://wiki.debian.org/UEFI#A32-bit_x86_PC_.28i386.29_support_for_UEFI

    That would make you the awesomest, as I really love the Mint Software Center and the Update Manager. Still by far unreached by all other distros.

    Have a nice day folks!

    – OnFire

  110. Still further to my posting, numbered 114, Ctrl Alt Backspace did not work. Cursor froze again but is fine after a reset button reboot once more.

  111. Hi, I’m actually running 17.3 Cinnamon 64 bit on a Lenovo G 50-70 laptop.
    I’ve problems with the suspension mode (the system is unable to reactivate after it) and with mounting data partitions of the hard-disk (it says that Windows is not fully shut down, but right after the installation I didn’t have that problem. Maybe it came cleaning the system’s registry with Ccleaner on Windows?).
    Could this upgrade to 18 version help fixing these problems?
    Thanks a lot.

  112. Hey Clem! I have Linux Mint 17.3 Mate on a laptop and I want to upgrade it to Linux Mint 18. Is it possible to upgrade to Cinnamon version? Thanks!

  113. Mint 18 runs like a charm on my ThinkPenguin laptop (using the latest available kernel), which previously had 17.3 installed. I did screw up during the migration path, so I decided to start with a clean slate.

    So far non complaints whatsoever from my side.

    Thanks a lot for all the hard work you put in.

  114. It looks like 3.0.6 version of Cinnamon has a change supposedly fixing the Network manager icon not showing VPN shield on it. After my upgrade I am on 3.0.7 version of Cinnamon, I am connected via a VPN, but the Network icon is just normal connected ethernet icon without the special VPN badge. Would love to see a fix!

  115. What a visual booting to the desktop, after a clean install!!!
    I use Aptik and do clean installs, so no problems there and everything seems to be behaving properly. Congrats on a fine piece of work.

  116. I had the same experience described in #53. I hammered on it with apt-get install -f and rerunning the upgrade until it finally went through. After a couple of desktop-related niggles, the only outstanding annoyance is the main page of the System Monitor saying there’s no space, and the File Systems tab being completely blank. df in a terminal window gives the correct result of the drive at the 50% level.

    All things taken, you folks did a terrific job with this version.

  117. 2nd install from 17.3 to 18 with Cinnamon OK, no problems, I also had 3 different OS previously installed. I didn’t read 2nd footnote to use default settings. I didn’t see that some codec not included, if so, will there be pointers to safe sources to install to 18 with Cinnamon?

  118. mintupgrade check looked OK, and the live boot worked, but mintupgrade upgrade still failed:

    dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/texlive-latex-base-doc_2015.20160320-1_all.deb (–unpack):
    trying to overwrite ‘/usr/share/doc/texlive-doc/latex/url/url.tex.gz’, which is also in package texlive-latex-recommended-doc 2013.20140215-1
    dpkg-deb: error: subprocess paste was killed by signal (Broken pipe)
    Errors were encountered while processing:
    /var/cache/apt/archives/texlive-latex-base-doc_2015.20160320-1_all.deb
    E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

    Which is kinda sad because I don’t even care about that package. Now I can’t even run apt-get:

    $ apt-get
    apt-get: relocation error: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libapt-pkg.so.5.0: symbol _ZNKSt7__cxx1112basic_stringIcSt11char_traitsIcESaIcEE7compareERKS4_, version GLIBCXX_3.4.21 not defined in file libstdc++.so.6 with link time reference

    So I’m just gonna do a clean install I guess.

  119. I just re-installed from the USB stick w/o formatting so I could keep my /home and now everything is fine. Only took a few minutes. Thanks for the awesome distro — I just hope the upgrade stuff works better next time.

  120. I updated my Dell Inspiron desktop PC from 17.3 to 18, using the published instructions OK. By and large, my system is working well. It seems slower to boot up but then seems faster.

    I get some strange things happening if Secure Boot is on, so I turn it off. I believe that this is expected. The symptoms that I get with Secure Boot are that sometimes I get a blank screen. I input my crypto LUKS key to unlock my encrypted LVM2. I don’t get to see anything but this works. On other occasions I see an over-sized log in prompt that does not function. The password input box just stays empty, and the LVM2 is not unlocked. As I say, I turn Secure Boot off, which is what we are told to do. So far, that works OK.

    However, I could not get New Login to work. It just locked up. I have not tried it a second time though.

    I use Traditional Green theme with Mint-X icons. I like the way that folders can be individually coloured.

    Although not a problem, I noticed that the following three programs are not properly themed with this setup:

    Backups (Déjà Dup)
    Calculator
    Disks (gnome-disk-utility)

    I use a custom keyboard mapping, so that I can easily type ȝ, ſ, ġ, ħ, and some accented vowels. This custom mapping was lost on upgrade, and had to be re-done. Users with a custom keyboard map should be made aware of this. It was easily fixed from my backup copy.

    I am finding that .pdf files are of lower quality. I’m not sure why yet.

  121. Sorry I did not find this site first 🙁
    I have had problems with 17.1, 17.2, and 17.3 (mostly things like printers not working). Mine is plain vanilla.
    The MintUpgrade ran for a long time and then finally crashed. Very little else would run after the crash – plus, I could not reboot.
    Someone spent a powerful lot of time setting up this conversion script. Thank you for the effort.

    I created a small partition to install Mint 18. I moved my Thunderbird data over to Mint 18 and it works just fine.
    All of my remote printers installed and work perfectly.
    I am able to access every computer on my network without any problems.
    Mint 18 has some very nice upgrades to the software and user interfaces. I like.
    It took me a while to find the “Window List” button. Too many new options for an old man like me. Wish I knew the CPU load for each possible button/gadget/app. Probably too much to ask for as no one really knows that answer.
    I am glad I switched – even if it did require most of a day.

    Thanks to the development team – 18 is great!

  122. I’m quite happy with this upgrade, except for the sound from the headphones that stops working after suspend. I can only recover the sound if I shutdown completely and do a cold reboot. Quite annoying… Other are facing this issue?

  123. Hello, I don’t really understand why KDE edition should not be supported for upgrade from Mint17.3 to Mint18?
    If KDE is unstable at the moment it could also be decided that the upgrade support will be delayed until KDE 5.x is good enough for that.
    Nobody wants to go from a stable KDE edition in Mint 17.3 to an unstable one anyway.
    This upgrade path would help people with many Mint-KDE 17.3 machines in some companies (like mine I must confess).
    Thanks!

  124. Right click on font to open in “Font Viewer” not working. Launching in the terminal for install works.

  125. Hi,Clem. I got an error.

    Preparing to unpack …/xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse_1%3a13.1.0-1ubuntu2_amd64.deb …
    Unpacking xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse (1:13.1.0-1ubuntu2) …
    Preparing to unpack …/xserver-xorg-input-evdev-lts-vivid_3%3a10_amd64.deb …
    Unpacking xserver-xorg-input-evdev-lts-vivid (3:10) over (1:2.9.0-1ubuntu2~trusty1) …
    Selecting previously unselected package xserver-xorg-input-evdev.
    Preparing to unpack …/xserver-xorg-input-evdev_1%3a2.10.1-1ubuntu2_amd64.deb …
    Unpacking xserver-xorg-input-evdev (1:2.10.1-1ubuntu2) …
    dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/xserver-xorg-input-evdev_1%3a2.10.1-1ubuntu2_amd64.deb (–unpack):
    trying to overwrite ‘/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf’, which is also in package xserver-xorg-core-lts-vivid 2:1.17.1-0ubuntu3.1~trusty1.1
    Preparing to unpack …/xserver-xorg-input-wacom-lts-vivid_3%3a10_amd64.deb …
    Unpacking xserver-xorg-input-wacom-lts-vivid (3:10) over (1:0.25.0-0ubuntu1.1~trusty1) …
    Selecting previously unselected package xserver-xorg-input-wacom.
    Preparing to unpack …/xserver-xorg-input-wacom_1%3a0.32.0-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb …
    Unpacking xserver-xorg-input-wacom (1:0.32.0-0ubuntu3) …
    Preparing to unpack …/xserver-xorg-core-lts-vivid_3%3a10_amd64.deb …
    Unpacking xserver-xorg-core-lts-vivid (3:10) over (2:1.17.1-0ubuntu3.1~trusty1.1) …
    Selecting previously unselected package xserver-xorg-core.
    Preparing to unpack …/xserver-xorg-core_2%3a1.18.3-1ubuntu2.2_amd64.deb …
    Unpacking xserver-xorg-core (2:1.18.3-1ubuntu2.2) …
    Selecting previously unselected package xserver-xorg.
    Preparing to unpack …/xserver-xorg_1%3a7.7+13ubuntu3_amd64.deb …
    Unpacking xserver-xorg (1:7.7+13ubuntu3) …
    Preparing to unpack …/xorg_1%3a7.7+13ubuntu3_amd64.deb …
    Unpacking xorg (1:7.7+13ubuntu3) over (1:7.7+1ubuntu8.1) …
    Selecting previously unselected package libgl1-mesa-dri:amd64.
    Preparing to unpack …/libgl1-mesa-dri_11.2.0-1ubuntu2_amd64.deb …
    Unpacking libgl1-mesa-dri:amd64 (11.2.0-1ubuntu2) …
    Processing triggers for man-db (2.6.7.1-1ubuntu1) …
    Errors were encountered while processing:
    /var/cache/apt/archives/xserver-xorg-input-evdev_1%3a2.10.1-1ubuntu2_amd64.deb
    E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

    Please help me,thx.

  126. Hi Patrox333.

    I understand why an upgrade from 17.x to 18 is not going to fly. Unlike the other DE’s, with 18 KDE is moving to a diffeent technology – the QT4 to QT5 libraries as well as new Plasma code.
    Plasma 5 is not an upgrade for 4, it is REPLACEMENT. It’s too much to upgrade and the settings files, file associations and the like are likely to break. It’s not a matter of Plasma 5 being unstable (I don;t believe it is now) but to do with the fact that Plasma 5 is less an upgrade of 4 as a completely new DE. You can’t ‘upgrade’ KDE to Cinnamon, so you can’t upgrade KDE 4 to 5 with all new QT libraries, apps and DE.

    Still, it’s a one off deal. Install Mind KDE 18.0 with Plasma 5 and then 18.1, 18.2, 18.3, 19, etc… will all upgrade.

    It’s better than the old days in Mint when every upgrade was a re-install and better than GNOME 3 which was such a shock to the GNOME community that Mint had to fork the code and produce Cinnamon!

  127. Hello Jedinovice, thx for your answer. So actually the upgrade path from KDE 4 to 5 should be proposed by the KDE team as they chose the way they improved KDE. The thing is, if we’re obliged to reinstall all our machines, maybe we will leave Mint-KDE as one major reason for a company to run mostly on Linux is not only to prevent windows viruses and escape most spywares, but also to have easy migration paths and very stable machines. It’s what we appreciate tremendously so far with Mint. It saves a lot of troubles and money compared to windows. If we can’t rely on that, we will think twice before doing it again, consider other DEs and distros, and I know for sure that some end-users will push toward windows or OS X. KDE is a very neat DE, and end-users don’t yell much after migration to Linux as it is very integrated with all tools directly available with coherent look-n-feel. You can’t tell a non-geek end-user in a company “hey dude, just open a terminal and apt-get whatever you like that’s cool”. It does not work that way with real humans uninterested by IT and seeing IT only as a tool for their job, if not a nuisance.

  128. Hi Clem ! A big THANKS to you and the Team for all that great work… Upgrade succesfull, but one little thing : contextuals menus on Cinnamon are mixed french and english… Not a big deal, but maybe a aign of a bigger problem ? Don’t know how to fix it…

    Cheers !

  129. Tried it this morning to see if worked as I had a spare minute or two over lunch, and it killed my 17.3 Installation after updating to 18, Kept refusing to login with session errors due to GLib – Critical in MDM, along with other issues such as initctl.
    After trying various ways to get it working for about an hour or two I gave up and went and grabbed the DVD ISO instead.
    SO FYI That warning up the top saying might break your installation after updating ain’t lying!
    Doesn’t really matter much to me other than lost time spent on it, as I keep all files separate from install on my machine here anyway so should be back up and running soon!

  130. Correction to # 145:

    I erroneously thought that my logon symptoms were caused by Secure Boot. However, further investigation showed that the logon symptoms were caused by the recommended NVIDIA vers. 361.42-0ubuntu2 driver.

    My previously-reported symptoms go away when the default driver is used.

    LM18 seems to work OK, on my system, with Secure Boot switched to either Enabled or Disabled (when the xserver-xorg-video-nouveaux vers. 1:1.0.12-1build2 driver is used).

  131. After several tries to install Mint 18 I finally succeded! The previous setups were all canceled by the installer telling that grub2 could not be installed in /target/ (that is where the installer mounts the present partitions). Creating a small (250 MB) EFI partition and installing the bootloader there works.

    I disabled legacy boot in the UEFI BIOS before the Mint installation.

  132. cant upgrade((

    always get this message on mintupgrade check

    Reading package lists… Done
    Building dependency tree
    Reading state information… Done
    Calculating upgrade… Failed
    The following packages have unmet dependencies:
    libsoup2.4-1 : Depends: glib-networking (>= 2.32.0) but it is not going to be installed
    E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.
    E: Internal error, Upgrade broke stuff

    + Restoring your backed up APT source

  133. Would love to get the ability to get -a ping back
    Also want to be able to have screen saver display my picture again

    Lost both since upgrading from Mint 17.1 to 17.3

  134. can someone help me with the initramfs error
    everytime i try to install linux mint 18 it fails to boot and gives me the >

    (initramfs) mount: mounting /dev/loop0 on //filesystem.squashfs failed: no such device can mount /dev/loop0 (/cdrom/casper/filesystem.squashfs) on //filesystem.squashfs
    exit

    google with solutions but nothing works anyone ever encounted this problem and can help?

  135. After the upgrade I had the login screen when starting but after the login all I had was a black screen with the mouse. I tried several things (reinstalling the nvidia driver, editing the .xinitrc, etc) from command line with no success. In the end I had to reinstall cinnamon. I think using the nightly builds of cinnamon 3.0 on mint 17.3 (to fix a bug in firefox) messed up the upgrade process.

  136. 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.

  137. So I finally bit the bullet and went for the upgrade on my Lenovo Y50-70. Everything went mostly seamless, I had only one crash complaining about mysql-server issues. I did an apt remove mysql-server and then everything completed nicely. Ran mintupgrade upgrade a few times to make sure everything is there.

    Only two issues that I can see:

    – the default nvidia drivers (361.42) cause cinnamon to crash, I had to fallback to nouveau. Did anyone else face this? I’d like to switch to the nvidia drivers eventually
    – related to the above, I’m not able to switch to 4k mode using nouveau. Each time I switch from full-hd to uhd, my desktop is divided into 4 identical squares and I’m not able to click on anything
    – clicking reboot in cinammon causes the mint boot logo to appear, but the system just hangs (I waited for about 10 minutes and did a cold restart). This has happened every time since upgrading to the latest kernel I was offered in mintupdate.

    Other than the above, everything seems rock solid! Thanks for the upgrade path, Clem!

    If anyone has some suggestions regarding the issues above, they would be much appreciated.

  138. @JohnT Made some progress with no result, will keep trying other methods from Google and report back.
    Thanks.

  139. Replying to 163, in my case, the reboot hang was caused by mysql-server which didn’t get upgraded properly apparently. I removed it completely after fighting with apt for a bit and now it’s working.

    Now if I only could make the nvidia drivers work. I’ve adde the graphics-drivers ppa and tried 340.96, 358, 361, 364 and 367 to no avail. The login manager seems to work fine, but cinnamon crashes every time. Using nvidia-settings to switch to the intel card allows me to start cinnamon, but obviously the nvidia card is disabled.

    Anyone else having issues with an 860M card on LM18?

  140. @Cecar: thanks. I did, but it didn’t fix it for me. What did eventually fix it was upgrading to the latest nvidia-settings package from the graphics-drivers ppa (currently running 367.35, latest drivers recommended by nvidia

  141. @Roger Maatje #162
    So far Mint KDE edition seems not be planned to be upgradable from 17.x to 18. Only reformat-your-machines and reinstall everything.
    But it’s a pity, I also would like this possibility to be here.
    In some cases it’s ok to perform a full reinstall, it’s cleaner anyway, but when you have many machines in that case in a company, it’s becoming a problem to not have this possibility at all.
    Actually if this upgrade process existed and kept only file systems, mount points, users, user homes and data, that would make it. One can bear to reinstall a few software packages and precise a few little things in its desktop environment. It would be MUCH better than not having this upgrade process at all.

  142. Is there a copy of Linux that doesn’t use Google products at all? I like the mint operating system except for all the google software, prying into and keeping records of all our information personal and otherwise and spyware and everything else that comes with the google experience like nosing into all my email and targeting me with ads and all kinds of rude and unwanted things.

    Zeke

  143. @ Zeke

    Which Google software are you referring to?

    You also can chose not to install 3rd party software during installation and uninstall software you do not like after installation.

    Edit by Clem: Afaik the only thing from Google in the default installation (whether you add codecs or not) are fonts.

  144. Upgrade of my laptop proceeded without error and everything tested is working as expected. However, boot loading time and loading times of programs such as Firefox are noticeably longer than 17.3. This is not a show-stopper but it is noticeable. The laptop has an Intel i3 processor and plenty of RAM. Are there any things I should check?

  145. @Terry Phillips: Check if other kernels exhibit the same issue. I remember upgrading to 4.2.x or 4.4.x when using 17.3 and I ran into the same problem. Downgrading back to 3.19 restored performance.

  146. HP’s printer driver HPLIP won’t fully install:

    RE-CHECKING DEPENDENCIES
    ————————
    error: A required dependency ‘libtool (libtool – Library building support services)’ is still missing.
    error: Installation cannot continue without this dependency.
    error: Please manually install this dependency and re-run this installer.

  147. Successfully made the full upgrade to Mint 18, the jump from XFCE to Cinnamon, and am enjoying EVERY bit of it! Granted, I know that Cinnamon uses more resources and it is very apparent when I use Chromium browser to watch stuff on YouTube, which I have always done… but that was easily remedied with GTK YouTube Viewer. Now my family can get back on Facebook (or whatever other social media they use) under Chromium just as before; we no longer have to deal with that stupid SSL_connection bug/issue anymore. 🙂

    I don’t know if this is a good place to make a request, but is there any way we could get just one other Alt-Tab switcher style? While I like the nostalgia of the “Cover-flow” and the “Timeline 3d” alt-tab switcher styles, I grew very fond of the “Ring Switcher” under Compiz while i was still using Mint 13 XFCE and it was VERY snappy/fast.

  148. Re: comment #175

    The printer works if the usb cable is attached but won’t print or scan wirelessly…

  149. Re: comment #175 again

    When I try to run hp-setup nothing happens. I’m told that HPLIP is preinstalled on Mint 18. Why is hp-setup not included? That’s how you set up wireless printing and scanning….

  150. Re: comment #175

    HPLIP is said to be preinstalled on Mint 18. If so, then why won’t hp-setup work? That’s how you set the printer up to wirelessly print and scan. I downloaded the latest HPLIP from HP but it won’t install properly…

  151. When i use the live disk on my Aspire E 15 Start ES1-512-C4GL the touchpad does not work at all. it works in linux mint 17 however.

  152. another bug in xplayer, the preferences setting “disable screensaver when playing video or audio is not working, the screensaver keep initiating even that option already selected

  153. I bought my new laptop with Nvidia card for graphics and now am enjoying Mint Mate 18 64 bit. Great work Mint team. And the wife can run her SIMS games on the other laptop with ATI graphics card. It’s all good!

  154. Tried to upgrade two laptops from 17.3 to 18. On one machine (more or less standard), it took a while but worked fine. On the other (my daily machine, quite tweaked), I did all dry-run tests which worked fine but the upgrade failed: In the middle of the upgrade process, my screen went black and I could not even recover from console. Seems to be an issue with the NVIDIA driver. After reboot, system was unusable. I had to install from scratch. Not an issue for me, but I wanted to report here.

  155. just my 2cents

    why you guys making this upgrade from 17.3 to 18 so complicated?
    before you could just upgrade from update manager with 2 clicks and now you guys expecting that all of linux users are in experienced level to use su apt-get…

    this is reason why linux never goes behind 4% of users in this planet because you guys making all so complicated. all linux programers should make up their mind and make linux more simplified for normal users.

    can you change this for next releases. a lot of users would be grateful. especially inexperienced.

  156. In Mint 18 I can’t use my Logitech diNovo keyboard and mouse, as was the case years ago in Mint 13. Can’t remember what the solution was for this.

  157. Hi Clem and team…
    Can I install mint-y icons (and themes) on a 17.3-cinnamon edition?
    I’ll there for now and proceed to a 18 clean install later sometime…
    (And once more many thanks for the great work all these years!)

  158. I just need to confirm that in linux mint 18 ralink chipset work? I mean as its based on ubuntu 16.04 and i have tried ubuntu 16.04 the wifi ralink r3290 doesn’t works.

    Anybody has tested the ralink wifi in linux mint 18?

    Then only i can make upgrade.

    Thanks

  159. Hi,

    Following the instructions exactly, my system crashed during upgrade.
    The GUI was broken afterwards. After playing around with apt-get the GUI is running again but the network manager is broken (“The system network services are not compatible with this version”).
    Restarting the upgrade stops with an error (…package not fount).
    So now I have no internet and usb drives won’t mount – what to do now?

  160. I updated to 18 via terminal(not fresh install).The output of inxi -Sz and the update manager both how my distro as 17.3 whereas GRUB and the start-up screen show 18 .Is my upgrade incomplete/broken?

  161. @Erkhyan (45)

    i had a similar problem with a Thinkpad T60, ‘no network devices’ and the upgrade insisted it had to download something. warm restarts did not fix the network. a cold restart did fix it and i was able to complete the upgrade.

  162. Hi Clem

    what could be a reason of the following errors while
    trying to upgrade to Mint 18:

    kde-style-breeze-qt4 : Requires: kde-style-breeze (= 4:5.5.5-0ubuntu1) but will not be installed
    libsoup2.4-1 : Requires: glib-networking (>= 2.32.0) but will not be installed
    E: Błąd, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve returned error
    E: Internal error, Upgrade broke stuff

    What can I do beside clean install ?

  163. I got this message when upgrading to Linux Mint 18


    update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-3.19.0-32-generic
    Warning: No support for locale: en_US.utf8
    Errors were encountered while processing:
    firmware-b43-installer
    firmware-b43legacy-installer
    E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

    ————————————————
    !! ERROR: Failed to upgrade some of the packages. Please review the error message, use APT to fix the situation and try again.
    !! Exiting.

    Hope that someone can help me!

  164. >>>>>Ok, so this is what I get when trying to upgrade.

    Errors were encountered while processing:
    /var/cache/apt/archives/libde265-0_1.0.2-2_amd64.deb
    E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

    ————————————————
    !! ERROR: Failed to upgrade some of the packages. Please review the error message, use APT to fix the situation and try again.
    !! Exiting.

    >>>>>So, I tried using apt -f install, to no avail. So then I tried….

    sudo apt-get –purge remove libde265:amd64
    Reading package lists… Done
    Building dependency tree
    Reading state information… Done
    You might want to run ‘apt-get -f install’ to correct these:
    The following packages have unmet dependencies:
    gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad : Depends: libde265-0 (>= 0.8) but it is not going to be installed
    libapt-pkg-perl : Depends: perlapi-5.18.1 but it is not installable
    libc-dev-bin : Depends: libc6 (= 2.7) but it is not installable
    Depends: libnettle4 (>= 2.7) but it is not installable
    libgtk2-perl : Depends: perlapi-5.18.2 but it is not installable
    libio-pty-perl : Depends: perlapi-5.18.1 but it is not installable
    liblist-moreutils-perl : Depends: perlapi-5.18.1 but it is not installable
    libnet-dns-perl : Depends: perlapi-5.18.1 but it is not installable
    libnet-ssleay-perl : Depends: perlapi-5.18.2 but it is not installable
    libpango-perl : Depends: perlapi-5.18.1 but it is not installable
    libperl5.18 : Depends: perl-base (= 5.18.2-2ubuntu1.1) but 5.22.1-9 is to be installed
    libpurple0 : Depends: perlapi-5.18.2 but it is not installable
    libsocket6-perl : Depends: perlapi-5.18.2 but it is not installable
    libsub-name-perl : Depends: perlapi-5.18.1 but it is not installable
    libtext-charwidth-perl : Depends: perlapi-5.18.1 but it is not installable
    libtext-iconv-perl : Depends: perlapi-5.18.1 but it is not installable
    libtext-soundex-perl : Depends: perlapi-5.18.1 but it is not installable
    libuuid-perl : Depends: perlapi-5.18.1 but it is not installable
    E: Unmet dependencies. Try ‘apt-get -f install’ with no packages (or specify a solution).
    hptesla@hptesla-Lenovo-G510 ~ $ sudo apt-get -f install
    Reading package lists… Done
    Building dependency tree
    Reading state information… Done
    Correcting dependencies… Done
    The following additional packages will be installed:
    libapt-pkg-perl libc-dev-bin libc6-dev libc6-dev:i386 libc6-dev-i386 libc6-dev-x32 libc6-i386 libc6-x32 libcairo-perl libclone-perl libde265-0 libexporter-tiny-perl
    libfarstream-0.2-5 libfile-fcntllock-perl libglib-perl libgtk2-perl libio-pty-perl liblist-moreutils-perl libnet-dns-perl libnet-ssleay-perl libpango-perl
    libpurple0 libsocket6-perl libsub-name-perl libtext-charwidth-perl libtext-iconv-perl libtext-soundex-perl libuuid-perl pidgin-data
    Suggested packages:
    glibc-doc glibc-doc:i386 manpages-dev:i386 libfont-freetype-perl libgtk2-perl-doc libtcl8.6 libtk8.6
    Recommended packages:
    libpurple-bin
    The following packages will be REMOVED:
    libgnutls28 libperl5.18
    The following NEW packages will be installed:
    libde265-0 libexporter-tiny-perl libfarstream-0.2-5
    The following packages will be upgraded:
    libapt-pkg-perl libc-dev-bin libc6-dev libc6-dev:i386 libc6-dev-i386 libc6-dev-x32 libc6-i386 libc6-x32 libcairo-perl libclone-perl libfile-fcntllock-perl
    libglib-perl libgtk2-perl libio-pty-perl liblist-moreutils-perl libnet-dns-perl libnet-ssleay-perl libpango-perl libpurple0 libsocket6-perl libsub-name-perl
    libtext-charwidth-perl libtext-iconv-perl libtext-soundex-perl libuuid-perl pidgin-data
    26 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 2 to remove and 1740 not upgraded.
    17 not fully installed or removed.
    Need to get 0 B/19.9 MB of archives.
    After this operation, 27.6 MB of additional disk space will be used.
    Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Y
    Unescaped left brace in regex is deprecated, passed through in regex; marked by <– HERE in m/^(.*?)(\\)?\${ <– HERE ([^{}]+)}(.*)$/ at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Question.pm line 72.
    Unescaped left brace in regex is deprecated, passed through in regex; marked by <– HERE in m/\${ >>>Am I completely screwed? I don’t want to restart my computer for fear of it not booting back up. Im guessing this is beyond my current scope of knowledge…..please help.

  165. I just upgraded to Mint 18 Mate. It went perfectly except for the fact that I do not have Mint-Y, Mint-y Dark, or Mint-Y-Darker themes. This was my main reason for upgrading. Anyone know what I can do about this?

  166. @Artur #194
    At the moment there is no upgrade possible for KDE edition from Mint 17 to 18. Hoping it will happen sometimes, just keeping users’ definitions and data could be enough actually. Reinitializing new KDE environment then reconfiguring a few stuff inside is not much an issue. Reformatting the PC of end-users is a real issue for them and for sysadmins in charge. I understand that to maintain many DEs like mate, cinnamon, kde, xfce is a challenge, but … A KDE upgrade to Mint 18 would be good ! 🙂
    Lobbying, lobbying … 😉

  167. A clear step backwards
    The update managers new “kernel” tab is a clear step backwards. Why? Before all sorts of different kernel versions were listed, available and easily downloadable. Now it shows only a few … 🙁

    Unsolved issues:

    Bluetooth – not able to send files from mobile to laptop (lenovo)
    Workaround: Install old blueman
    Calibre – tray icon button not shown (error message in debug file)
    VMPlayer doesnt show icon either, forgets all entered virtual machine listings
    Netactview not compatible any longer
    udisk problem? – shown non-existing, unmountable partion (not in 17x)
    Virtualbox – doesnt create icon in menu nor tray
    Shutdown procedure different – takes much longer than on 17.x

    and many more to come?!

  168. @ Patrox333

    Yes I know that upgrade from KDE version is not possible.
    But I’m using the Mint 17.3 edition of Mint.

    Any other ideas why it can’t be upgraded ?

  169. Thank you very much, Clem, for providing the simplest way to update to a new version that I have ever used.

    Your instructions for updating from LM 17.3 Cinnamon-64-bit to LM 18 Cinnamon-64-bit worked flawlessly. The whole process took about an hour, but I have no doubt that the slowness of my house’s WiFi-based LAN contributed to that. OTOH, all I had to do after committing my laptop to the update was to watch the script working its way through hundreds of instructions.

    Easiest update ever!

  170. Hi All, I am a very recent full time user of Linux using Ubuntu & i recently switched to Mint-18-Mate-32 which i find very good & adequate but i very recently tried the Mint Sarah ‘xpce’ version which i loved but have had to revert back to the Mate version of Linux because i could not get my HP ENVY5530 e-All-in-One printer to work with it and at my age i needed the printer to print so as i could remember all that was available on Mint’xpce’.

    I am looking forward to when that bug (that is what it is to me) of ‘xpce’ is fixed on re-installing it as i think that it is a great operating system, thank you very much to all the people involved.

    Adios Howie.

  171. I ran the upgrade simulation – no problems were reported. Then when I started the actual upgrade, it failed with the “libsane” error. I tried running “apt install -f”, but it failed, too. Then I tried “apt install -f libsane” (or maybe it was libsane-common). Then I tried to remove it with “apt-get remove -f libsane-common”. At this point the system was so broken that I lost my Internet connectivity and couldn’t research any longer. I restarted to see an expected result – kernel panic. I had the live Mint USB and also I had a full Clonezilla back-up of the whole disk, so this was not a problem.
    Later I made a clean install of Mint and it works OK, except that GWakeOnLan does not work and Banshee takes quite a while time and CPU to start.
    This all is not a big deal for a free OS like Munt, but this year I won’t be making my Mint donation.

  172. Thank for your instructions.
    It’s very good for my computor.

    I had problems with my printer (Lexmark S305) and VirtualBox but after a re-install work good.

    I lost my bluetooth but after install Blueman, it’s good

  173. What is the best computer to install Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon (ou Mate)?

    Otherwise, what is the minimal prerequisites?

    Finally, should I use KDE in Linux Mint?

    Best regards from Brazil.

    Fred

  174. Dear Developers,
    my system lost it’s ability to wake up from suspend mode, if i’m running on the proprietary nvidia-340_driver, my graphic card is a geforce 9700gt. everything works with the xserver-xorg-video-nouveau_driver, despite it takes a long time to get to suspend.
    maybe there is a possibility to fix that, because i’m often in need of the hardware support from the graphic card.
    With mint 17.3 everything worked without troubles.

    Thnx a lot!
    Greets

  175. I’ve had a problem with sound/video crashing Mint since version 15. I’ve hoped for improvement with every version since. I’m about to give up on Mint. This has happened with multiple systems. I’ve built numerous PC’s over the years using multiple motherboards and video cards. Nvidia is what I prefer. AMD Radeon has been a disaster.

    Still with all the experimentation, any time I play YouTube videos in a browser, it crashes my system. Then there are the times that it crashes when it plays a sound from Facebook.

    Again, this is only common with Mint on multiple systems and multiple versions of Mint. I’ve done the recommended disabling of hardware acceleration in Chrome and still get the same results.

  176. hello,
    i have troubles waking up the system after suspend mode, it seems that the proprietary nvidia-340_driver doesnt wake up my geforce 9700m gt.
    everything worked with 17.3, also when i’m using the xserver-xorg-video-nouveau_driver.
    thnx a lot

  177. Afet the good upgrade, I had a problem with the video and pdf icones
    To solve it, it’s very easy remane evince.thumbnailer and totem.thumbnailer in evince.thumbnailer.old and totem.thumbnailer.old

    And reboot.
    That all

    Thank for your work

  178. Hi.

    I hope someone can help me here, urgent.

    Right now I see this screen when I turn on my PC: http://imgur.com/a/xl09c

    This is not the exactly order as it happened because I can’t remember, but I’m gonna try to summary:

    > I followed these instructions: https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2316
    > The command “mintupgrade upgrade” was running ok, but at some point it stopped and showed me the same error as comments 9 and 42 and others reported here.
    > I deleted “libsane”
    > I tried “apt install -f”, it removed some packages and installed others.
    > I tried the command “mintupgrade upgrade” again and I got a error message saying that some packages at var/cache… (I should have taken a pic because I can’t remeber what packages were) were not installed.
    > Then I tried to go back with the command “mintupgrade restore-sources” but it said that the backup APT was deleted.
    > And so I had the brilliant idea to restart the PC. How dumb.

    I hope you understand my explanation. Is there a way to recover the system without formatting the HD? I don’t really want to.

    Appreciate your help.

  179. I just upgraded to Mint 18 Mate 64 from 17.3 which was also an upgrade from 17. It went extremely well on my 8-year-old home-brew box. I was absolutely amazed watching the process on the terminal from beginning to end! What genius it was for the Mint team to put this all together!
    The system seems to be working great so far although the booting time is slightly slower than before, maybe it will pick up as it adapts. Will keep you posted…Many thanks!

  180. My PC becomes frozen while running the upgrade script. I had to do a hard reset and after this the reboot failed. So don´t forget to make a backup before trying the upgrade!!

    I had a backup but I first tried to install LM 18 over my broken LM 17.3 installation. Without formatting the home partition (good to have one) my settings were still available and I had only to reinstall the missing programs.

    Not all of them are running properly on LM 18, but I´ll stay at LM 18, hoping that 18.1 will fix it.

    Hint: The .bashrc of a fresh LM 18 installation contains much more code as in LM 17.3. So if you keep your home partition you should copy this code from a complete LM 18 installation elsewhere.

  181. During upgrade on Xfce 17.3 to 18 I got into the same problem with the package libde265 as the user rodel in post 60. The package was installed earlier from the ppa repository but the apt-get -f install could not fix it anyhow.
    I fixed it by usingdpkg –purge –force-all libde265 and then continuing again with apt-get -f install.

  182. joao: I had the same problem with a few mostly PPA packages or manually installed, backported packages.

    Neither running mintupgrade upgrade nor apt-get -f install could resolve such issues, but what helped was using directly dpkg command to purge these packages. (dpkg –purge –force-all packagename). Then I could repeat the apt-get -f install command to fix the rest, and repeat again mintupgrade upgrade. I had to re-iterate these steps 3 or 4 times on my system because it contained a lot of PPAs, some intentionally downgraded packages from ubuntu-precise (12.04) such as glabels v2 etc., so perhaps not a common scenario.

  183. I installed Mint in a partition and it seemed to work except for thew wi-fi. When i rebooted a few hours later the “Install Mint” icon appeared on the desktop. This was the icon I click when I initially installed Mint. Why did the “Install Mint” icon return?

  184. is it possible to make every upgrade bit more easygoing like before, just couple of automatic clicks to install new version always like it was before in update manager.
    looks like this upgrade from 17.3 to 18 requires huge knowledge of apt-get typing.
    i would prefer, and i am not alone to make it more easy for novice users.
    thanks guys

  185. I may have lost my Mint 17 Cinnamon installation — really liked it. In getting my computer back running, I installed Mint 18 Cinnamon and have one problem with it. This is new install, not an upgrade. I’m getting blurry-eyed reading comments, etc. so maybe someone could just give me the hint: when 18 was installed, there was no icon in the upper left corner of screen to perform workspace operations. I have 4 workspaces, but they act differently from Mint 17 and I see no way of deleting one of them or adding another. Cannot get all 4 to appear at once on screen. Can only switch by using the workspace switcher applet (and don’t know how to turn off the annoying “slapping” sound when switching). Is there something I have missed about the upper left corner icon which doesn’t seem to be there in 18? Now 80 years old, need a little help. I’ll be having my hands full trying to recover data from a possibly bad drive.

  186. Hi all,
    upgrade from working 17.3 failed just in the middle. Thus instead of trying to repair I decided to reinstall from scratch preserving just /home.
    I created an usbdrive using UNetbootin, booted and then I started the installation preserving NTFS partitions (Win10 + Asus restore ) and EFI partition.
    I made sure the installation was in EFI environment.

    Installation went through fine, but at next reboot, grub menu was correct, win10 boots fine, but Sarah dumps into intitramfs prompt.
    BusyBox v1.22.1 (Ubuntu 1:1.22.0-15ubuntu) built in shell

    Now, the only way of booting Sarah is through an usb drive with super_grub2_hybrid_2.02s2
    after this everything is fine.

    I unsuccessfully tried to fix it with boot-repair but at reboot I get a few more entries in the menu and when choosing Linuxmint the system hangs instead of dropping to busybox.

    I need some help to fix it
    thanx
    Marco

  187. Same for me.

    christ says:
    July 17th, 2016 at 10:35 pm
    when i try to change the theme icons using preferences > appearance > mint-y
    there is a yellow warning “this theme will not look as intended because the required GTK+ theme engine ‘adwaita’ is not installed”
    but when i checked at software manager, the adwaita is already installed. so how to remove that yellow warning?

  188. Maintenant chez moi M17.3 marche tres bien. J’attendrai jusqu’a la fin et puis je monterai un niveau de plus. Tres grand merci pour ton travail, Clement – numero un. Distro watch 🙂

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