LMDE Upgrade Tool in BETA

The BETA of the new Upgrade Tool is now available for testing.

It can be used to upgrade LMDE 4 to LMDE 5.

To install it refresh your cache and install the mintupgrade package:

apt update
apt install mintupgrade

The Upgrade Tool is graphical but it is launched from the command line:

sudo mintupgrade

Follow the instructions on the screen.

When the tool is done and the upgrade is successful uninstall it and reboot your computer.

apt remove mintupgrade
sudo reboot

Use the comment section to seek help or to give us your feedback.

Bugs can be reported at https://github.com/linuxmint/mintupgrade/issues (include a screenshot of the window and the output of the terminal in your bug reports).

Notes:

  • If anything goes wrong all changes can be reverted using Timeshift.
  • If you close the tool for any reason, you can run it again no matter how far you went in the upgrade.
  • This BETA is only available for LMDE. Do not test this tool in Linux Mint 20 (the Linux Mint 21 package base isn’t stable yet).

104 comments

  1. hello the team!
    I tested the mintupgrade in a virtual machine (I don’t want to mess up my lmde4 which works very well): the installation went well and works without any problem; I launch the program, I have the welcome screen, I click on “let’s go!” and the phase 1 is displayed then nothing! we see the cursor turning so the program seems to work but it never goes to phase 2 (I waited for almost 30 min).
    In conclusion, for my part, it does not seem to be up to date and does not work for me; I will stay with my lmde4 until lmde6 and take advantage of the LTS of debian, it’s more secure

    thank you all the same to the team for its efforts!

    long live LMDE!

    Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

    1. I’m also upgrading a Virtualbox installation. When I type “sudo mintupgrade” I get this error:
      No protocol specified
      Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused
      No protocol specified
      Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused
      No protocol specified
      Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused

      (mintupgrade.py:7202): Gtk-WARNING **: 07:48:47.864: cannot open display: :0

    2. Hi Michael,

      Are you logged in as root or something? You should have access to the display when using sudo as user.

    3. Thanks for the response, Clem. To answer your question, I get the error after refreshing the cash and installing mintupgrade. I posted the terminal output above, but the formatting is pretty ugly. I’ll try again here:

      michael@vbox-lmde-glances:~$ sudo mintupgrade
      [sudo] password for michael:
      michael@vbox-lmde-glances:~$ No protocol specified
      Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused
      No protocol specified
      Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused
      No protocol specified
      Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused

      (mintupgrade.py:3398): Gtk-WARNING **: 15:55:05.615: cannot open display: :0

    4. Thanks, Clem. As it turns out, I’m updating in a terminal, not a console.

    5. OK. Did you modify sudo in any way? It should have access to your display. You can try to use “xhost +” (as user) and troubleshoot with sudo and “export DISPLAY=:0.0”.. but you shouldn’t have to. The default configuration of the system doesn’t forbid access to your display from sudo.

  2. I tried again and it seemed to work better: in fact, you must NOT CLOSE THE TERMINAL; however, I did not go to the end of the process because the program asks to uninstall or deactivate a whole bunch of programs (signal, protonvpn….) so definitely, this tool is not for me!
    after I remind you that it’s better to have a clean installation than an upgrade (test done in thingy)

    1. thank you clem for your answer; indeed, I saw this possibility in the options but really I am too afraid to kill my system and to make it wobbly whereas it functions very well thus; I will remain on lmde 4 until lmde 6; there is the LTS of debian which covers lmde4 until the exit of lmde6.

    2. LMDE 4 will EOL in August. When this gets out of BETA it will be the recommended way to upgrade your system. If anything goes wrong you can revert all changes using Timeshift.

  3. Could the future Mint 20 to 21 tool be integrated into the Update Manager similarly to how it works in the point releases? With an additional menu item once its available?

    1. The notification for new releases is handled by mintreport. After that, whether it’s part of mintupdate or the new mintupgrade tool, it doesn’t make much difference. This new tool is more robust and handles more scenarios than what we use for the point release upgrades.

  4. I ran a quick test. LMDE4 installed in a PROXMOX environment. Performed all updates etc.
    Then installed the mintupgrade tool and started the process.

    Please consider making the timeshift process optional. I do not use the tool.

    @Clem: Thanks!

    1. Same thoughts about Timeshift (I had to abort the upgrade in VM, because the storage size was not enough for Timeshift and I had no choice).

    2. Timeshift is already optional – just turn that requirement off in mintupgrade’s preferences window.

    3. @Monsta thank you! Embarrassing… but I haven’t even seen it. The upgrade was performed successfully in Virtualbox. It took about an hour. After the upgrade I had to reinstall a few packages (libapache2-mod-php, php-mbstring und phpmyadmin) to get php environment working again. The rest seems to be ok.

  5. Upgrade ran OK
    However, no update to systemd to run fstrim every 7 days, such as is provided with a straight LMDE5 install.
    Would appreciate this to be included (or instructions on how to do this manually).

    1. Actually, it looks like ‘sudo systemctl enable fstrim.timer’ is all that is required?
      I struggle with systemd – but it appears to be all that is required?

    1. Hi Jeremy,

      It’s harmless to leave it installed but once you’re upgraded you no longer need it so there’s no reason to keep it installed.

    1. Did it fail to install? It’s definitely in the list of packages added during the upgrade. It’s installed during the final phase.

  6. I tested it in my main machine today and worked like a charm. It took too long, about ~5h. The only issue was to manually disable some repos.

  7. Yes it failed to install. After I used the upgrade tool I had to install Warpinator from synaptic package manager. It was missing in the mint menu. Also the upgrade tool hangs at some point, I don;t remember exactly. I X it out and finished the installation in the terminal which also stopped without any additional information, so then I rebooted the system and to my surprise everything works perfectly.

    1. Thanks Joe,

      I can’t troubleshoot the hanging or the installation failure without the terminal output. Let us know if you get more information.

    2. To collect ALL terminal output:-
      1. Run the ‘script’ command (no parameters).
      2. Run the upgrade (just follow the instructions).
      3. When it finishes enter CTRL+D (in the terminal) to cause the output a text file called ~/typescript (about 2MB in my case).

  8. HI there, not sure why though I typed the commands exactly as written. The upgrade tool that was installed was the Linux Mint 21 ‘Vanessa’ not LDME 4 to LMDE 5 upgrade tool. I ran it to see if both upgrade options were in the one tool; No, it wasn’t. Also uninstalled and reinstalled upgrade tool to make sure before making comment. I did find out yo u can’t upgrade LMDE 4 to Linux Mint 21 ‘Vanessa’. Also the upgrade tool did recognize my version of Linux Mint is ‘Debbie’. Maybe it’s because my boot screen looks like Debian instead of the LM that was installed originally (the change happened when I was downloading older font packages for Debian) though system info shows that I’m running LMDE 4.

    1. The current upgrade is only designed to upgrade LMDE4->LMDE5.
      If you have mixed Ubuntu/Mint packages with Debian packages it is quite possible that your system is not upgradable by any automated tool.

      Ubuntu, Mint, LMDE and Debian are 4 different OS’s, but with considerable overlap.

    2. Could you show me the output of the following command:
      lsb_release -a
      and also the contents of the file /etc/linuxmint/info?

  9. This work fairly well for me. Any problems were met with the “fix” button and I was able to complete the upgrade. So far, everything is working well and without issue. I’m not sure how long it took to complete but it wasn’t too long. This was a Lenovo laptop that I use exclusively for LMDE. This is a great feature for Mint and one that work very well. I look forward to using for the next major update to Mint.

  10. Power source check will always succeed if acpi isn’t installed; please make it a dependency package or use /sys/class/power_supply/AC/online (check if content is 0 or 1) please!

  11. Excellent.
    Just ran it on actual hardware (a 4GB HP laptop), it ran through perfectly, it took about 90 minutes because of the poor wifi connection and/or slow processor.

    I shall wait until the upgrade is declared non-beta before upgrading my main desktop, though.

  12. Amazing 🙂

    My Fibocom L850 internal LTE modem works again, after the upgrade to LMDE 5.
    Sending USSD codes in Modem Manager GUI does however not work, not yet anyway.
    But the connection is stable. Which is the most important thing.

    Thanks Linux Mint!

    PS! The first thing I did after booting up was to uninstall Notes and re-install Gnote.
    I have so many notes and there is just no way I would starting using Notes (Sticky) after having gotten used to Gnote. I really think Gnote is a better notes app. But no big deal, as long as it as in the repository.

    Good upgrade tool!

    Very easy, just clicking fix when being asked if I wanted to have some foreign packages removed. I simply clicked fix and went ahead with the upgrade. 🙂

  13. Chris

    Go ahead with the upgrade.
    You can install Signal as a flatpak after you have completed the upgrade.

    In my case there were two apps I couldn’t re-install after the upgrade, one of which.was a was a nice app called curseradio.

    But ihis app has poor support and many users on forums complain they struggle to install it, even under Debian Buster..

    I did manage to install it under LMDE 4, but not under LMDE 5. But I think not being able to re-install an app or two does not justify not to upgrade your system as the benefits far outweighs the minor issues like not being able to re-install an app or two.

    Speaking of Warpinator. In my case I ended up with two instances of Warpinator, one being the regular package repository version, and one being the flatpak version.

    I was not sure which one to keep. After a little thinking I went ahead and uninstalled the regular repository version, thinking that it’s a new project that will be further develop ed in the next couple of years, and if so, the flatpak version would receive those updates continuously going forward.

    For those not familiar with.flatpaks, once you have set it up, you simply type the command flatpak update to update your flatpak apps every now and then to update your flatpaks.

    A good thing with flatpak apps are that they are not regarded as foreign packages, so none of your flatpaks are uninstalled during a system upgrade like this one.

    1. I would be seriously upset if any software “accidentally” installed a flatpak (or any non DEB piece of software). There is nothing preventing you compiling from source.

      BTW Since Warpinator is written & developed by Mint, I would be the repository version which is the most “developed” version, at least with respect to Mint & LMDE.

    2. OK so you recommend that I uninstall the version of Warpinator from flathub, and instead reinstall the package version from LMDE repository?

      How I ended up with both versions after the upgrade, I think it was the other way round. I think I had installed the Warpinator flatpak a couple of weeks before I yesterday upgraded to LMDE 5. Then the repository Warpinator got installed as well.

      I have over 20 flatpaks installed of different flavors, and none of those were involuntary uninstalled since they are considered part of the system (not regarded as foreign packages).

    3. Flatpaks don’t have the security story or integrity of Snaps (Mark Shuttleworth.)

    4. That’s just commercial talk. Canonical isn’t making a “better” Flatpak, they’re making a proprietary one (albeit with an open-source client which is totally useless on its own). One they control. One which places them between 3rd parties and distributions. One where they pretend to talk for all distributions, care for all desktops and all commercial interests. Let me make it clear that Canonical does not speak for Linux Mint when they sell their store as some universal Linux store upstream. This is not a Linux store, this is a Canonical store. I don’t know about you but I do not want to see access to 3rd party software restricted to me to snap only, where the only thing that matters for upstream devs is whether Canonical is happy with it or not.

      Snap could also be abandoned overnight by Canonical if it didn’t meet its goals. They’re pushing it commercially. Look at the reasons projects like Mir or Unity were started and then abandoned. It had little to do with Wayland or GNOME. If tomorrow Snap fails to become a standard Canonical will back Flatpak, not because it’s no longer worse and suddenly better than Snap, but because by then they’ll be done trying to take over that piece of the market.

    5. @Clem
      For me, it’s a talk about technology. Technologically speaking, Snap is superior to Flatpak because it supports aside of GUI apps, server tools, IoT apps, system services, and more; things that Flatpak cannot support. You can even build a complete OS on top of Snap; like Ubuntu Core. You can create your own app store within the Snap store, and build your Snap packages from your own private repositories, PPAs, etc. Microsoft, Google, JetBrains, Mozilla, and many others do this happily; why not you? It is true that the servers running the Snap Store are controlled by Canonical; but is this any different from Flathub? You are concerned to adopt Snap because Canonical could hypothetically abandon this technology. This is not going to happen for sure, but let’s say it happens. So what? They will replace it with something else. Canonical correctly decided to abandon Unity (I will not discuss the reasons) and replaced it with a slightly manipulated GNOME shell. Didn’t the users, the GNOME Foundation, and Canonical themself benefit from this change? In my opinion, the new Ubuntu desktop is much better and more exciting than Unity. (MIR is a different story; it was repurposed rather than abandoned.) And think of the new upcoming Flutter apps, which along with Electron apps, are the future of app development. Flutter apps will be exclusively packaged as Snaps, which is quite straightforward, as Google has built it directly into the Flutter SDK. As a Flutter developer, I can assure you that the packaging of Flutter apps as Flatpaks or debs is not straightforward. In my opinion, it will be beneficial to Mint if you stay side by side with Canonical and Snap. Think it over!
      I declare that I am not in any way related to Canonical.

    6. Hi Julian,

      Flatpak is open. Sure, Flathub is controlled by other people just like the Canonical store is controlled by Canonical, but it runs on code anyone can see/run/copy/contribute to. Flathub is not “the only” store which knows how to run that code, how to talk to the client. You’re not locked in a single store. Anyone can make a Flatpak repository and anyone’s Flatpak client can interact with as many different repositories as they want, without asking/needing anything from Flathub. That’s a huge difference isn’t it?

      Say tomorrow Flathub refuses to host Warpinator. No big deal, we make a Flatpak store on our own servers and configure flatpak to point to both. You see, we don’t depend on them. Good luck trying to do the same with Snap, it’s designed solely as a proprietary store, not an open solution and certainly not a way for software to be distributed in a non-centralized way.

  14. i have been a mint user for nearly 10 years, i love mint cinnamon. i am looking to transition from 20.3 to LMDE.
    my apologies if this ha already been addressed. i was wondering if it could be packaged as an appimage so it can be run from a USB stick instead of installing then removing. Is it going to be an LMDE generic updater, i.e. same tool for LMDE5 to LMDE6

    1. It will be the same tool used to LMDE 4 -> LMDE 5, and Mint 20.3 -> Mint 21, but you can’t upgrade LMDE to Mint or vice versa, although we’re doing our best to produce the same experience, these are two different distributions. We’ve no plans for making an appimage atm.

  15. Clem

    I have request in regards to the Fibocom L850-GL mentioned above. I was happy to discover that the modem again working under LMDE 5 as it did under LMDE 3, but not under LMDE 4 when I two years ago did a clean install of LMDE 4.

    However, the one functionality that is still not working in Modem Manager GUI, is sending USSD codes. You those codes you send to check the balance, buy data packages among other things.

    Is there anything you in Linux Mint could do in terms of pushing some required packages over Update Manager or perhaps notify the Modem Manager developer about this. Perhaps it could be fixed so that sending USSD codes would start working.

    Sending USSD codes have previously worked for me on LMDE 3 and LMDE 4 with Huawei ME936. The Huawei ME936 is however from 2014, and only supports download speeds of up to 100 Mb/s while the L850-GL modem supports up to 450 Mb/s download speeds due to it being a LTE Advanced modem under the CAT -9 standard.

    It would be great if sending USSD could start working again also for this modem.

    Thank you for all the work you do for all of us using your operating systems!

  16. Worked for me on actual hardware (thinkpad L430 running LMDE4). I too missed the hamburger menu and had to start over turning off Timeshift and deletion of foreign packages. Mainly it wanted to get rid of three brother printer and scanner drivers, which I kept and they tested fine after the upgrade. Maybe I got lucky. To be honest though, the time it took was not much of a savings over a fresh install and personalize, assuming you already have the iso downloaded. When it’s time for mint 21, I’ll elect for fresh install.
    Bob

  17. It failed, unfortunately. I was attempting to upgrade a fully cloned Virtualbox LMDE 4 VM. This was a newly built LMDE 4 VM. During the “setup” process, apparently, when setting up GRUB, a dialog box appeared on the terminal screen indicating that it could not find the correct drive… the upgrade process ended at that point. I’ll try again when I have a chance later… checking GRUB’s config thoroughly before then.

  18. Clem and the Mint team: thank you for your continued support of LMDE. It is my distro of choice and much appreciated!

    A few observations re: the beta mintupgrade package:

    1) Perhaps include a brief statement in the mintupgrade main window recommending that the user review preferences before proceeding? And some (more) detail regarding what constitutes “orphan” and/or “foreign” packages for the more novice users?

    2) All in all, the upgrade went surprisingly well. I say “surprisingly” because I have many additional applications installed that upgraded with no issues. The exception was QJackCTL; it was necessary to reconfigure the audio input and output in the “Advanced” settings before it functioned properly.

    3) For those who have newer/recent releases of apps like LibreOffice and SMPlayer, mintupgrade attempts to remove those apps in favor of the official repository versions. For example, LibreOffice was downgraded from the installed version 7.2 to version 7.0, after which none of the LibreOffice apps (calc, writer, etc.) would launch, and it was necessary to remove/purge LibreOffice, and then reinstall it (either from the repository or by downloading the deb file from the LibreOffice website). It may have been possible to avoid this by whitelisting “foreign” packages, but I did not realize this could be an issue until the upgrade was complete.

    4) After the upgrade, when attempting to launch YouTube and Vimeo videos from URL’s, Celluloid produces the error “Playback was terminated abnormally. Reason: Unrecognized file format.” I have not yet determined the cause, however this error does not occur with a fresh/clean install of LMDE5.

    5) A positive note: issues with the ATH9K wireless driver crashing in LMDE4 have been resolved in LMDE5 (it was resolved in kernel 5.8 and above).

    Mike

    1. Thanks Mike,

      We use the APT vocab here and I understand it’s not obvious at all. That said we do explain a little bit what the situation is when an issue is found.

      “The following packages need to be downgraded back to official versions [..] Otherwise these packages can create conflicts.” <-- This is for foreign packages (i.e. versions which are higher than the versions available in the repositories). "The following packages do not exist in the repositories" <-- This is for orphan packages. Keeping orphan packages can be relatively safe so we let people whitelist them. Foreign packages on the other hand are a recipe for disaster. If their version is higher than the target release's version they escape the upgrade while retaining constraints on their dependencies, thus preventing these dependencies to upgrade along with any packages which depend on their target versions.. this can lead to situations where a whole bunch of packages need to be removed to satisfy the problem, including core packages or desktop environments. To prevent this from happening we run a simulation, identify unwanted removals and forbid foreign packages.

  19. It would be nice if the orphaned package list was copy-able; updating the preferences with packages I wanted to keep was tedious. Even better: have checkmarks for the packages to keep and be able to just add them from the initial list.

  20. hello everyone

    I tried again (in virtual machine) and here is my definitive conclusion: the upgrade worked overall even if I had to reinstall the orphan packages like signal, protonvpn… because despite having kept them, it was still uninstalled; but, my god, it’s long! (ok I’m in virtual machine and my internet is weak) but it took me about 24 h to upgrade! so I’m going to stay in lmde4 on my main machine and enjoy the long lts support of debian 10 until 2024 (supposed year of release of lmde 6).I will make a clean installation of lmde6.

    Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

    1. The upgrade tool worked fine for me, the upgrade went well. The only issue I noticed, is that it took a lot of time to download only 1.3GB of packages but I’m suspecting the slow download speed it was caused by my vpn. I haven’t really had the time to test it a bit more without vpn and using my local connection. However, I did not encounter any other issues during the upgrade. 🙂

  21. Bug reporting for LMDE 5: opening windows with their titles on panel will lose their titles after being moved to another workspace…

  22. Hi everyone

    Does anyone know how to get the black&white menu button as it appear on the LMDE 5 iso after having upgraded to LMDE 5 with the upgrade tool? My menu button still has the same theme as the menu button in LMDE 4 (green&white).

    1. I think I found the solution.

      1 Right-clicking on the menu button
      2 Click Icon
      3 Click Default
      4 Choose the one icon that appear. It’s called linuxmint-logo-ring-symbolic. Click Select.

      I think that is the same icon as on the LMDE 5 iso?

      I will compare the two later, but I think they are the same icon.

  23. As I mentioned earlier the upgrade tool didn’t work for me because my system was confused. I installed Linux Mint Debian Edition 4 and because of packages I installed it thought it was Linux Mint Ubuntu Edition nevertheless I writing this comment on my LMDE5 machine with all of my data and setting intact all because I manually partitioned my hard drive while installing LMDE4. It took me about 3hrs to get all the software reinstalled.

    One thing I will mention… upon reboot my application menu and panel was on the other monitor one time out of four restarts… not an issue just making mention.

    First impressions… it’s more fluid than LMDE4; which I used for over two years on my main system. to look at my system you’d never know there was an upgrade, just the the way I like it.

    Thank you, for all those folks who helped; in whatever way they did; to bring LMDE5!!!

  24. Successful upgrade of LMDE-4-32bit via beta tool. Warpinator was present in the new system and thematic aspects (themes, panel, etc) looked pretty much the same. Only tweaks I made was disabling TimeShift since system was a VM. Took 4 hours to run but this was older hardware.

    I like that this upgrade tool is interactive so as to be adjusted to meet end-user needs; thanks!

  25. How does the upgrade tool handle drivers? Specifically the NVidia proprietary drivers versus the nuveau drivers. Does it revert the system to nuveau?

    1. If the nvidia drivers are from the repositories then it should preserve them. If their version is foreign (higher than repositories’) then it will downgrade them prior to the upgrade.

  26. The upgrade went pretty smoothly, but I have one minor and two more-serious issues.

    Minor: On the timeshift page there should be an instruction as to how to turn it off in preferences if you use some other backup method, such as clonezilla. Make it similar to the instruction on the foreign packages page.

    Major 1. Although I listed virtualbox-6.0 as a foreign package to retain, it was deleted. I saw that message fly by in the terminal window.

    Major 2. My wine program Overdrive For Windows now throws an error that it cannot contact the internet. I have seen this problem on other operating systems, and most recently I solved it in Manjaro KDE by installing lib32-libldap and lib32-gnutls, but neither of these are available in the repositories.

    1. Virtualbox 6.0 is not maintained since mid-2020. Its .deb package also depends on “python” package, which isn’t present in Debian 11 repos, so that package is an orphan and it’s removed in the process. Better switch to Virtualbox 6.1, it’s still supported and it doesn’t depend on any Python stuff.

  27. Can the location of the backup of snapshots be in another partition of the drive instead of the root partition?

    1. Yes – it’s worth putting timeshift in a different partition (or disk) to /root as this allows you to set a limit for its maximum size.

      But you can’t have normal snapshots in one place and a “special” snapshot taken prior to the upgrade in another.

  28. Got the upgrade done without error. It would be good if the upgrade can be done automatically after the initial questions and do not need manually answering at each stage of the upgrade since the upgrade can take a long time.

  29. The update tool worked a treat for me no issues what so ever. Had to fiddle a little to get desktop to the way I like it but nothing like a fresh install would of done! I have it set up xfce so was a little worried it would go wrong =)
    Thanks to Clem and the team for the work they do, I really appreciate it!

  30. I did an upgrade on 3 VMs and 2 physical.
    All wanted “ippusbxd needs to be removed”, no issue.
    One complained about a microsoft repository not supporting bullseye. (pwsh related, ok)
    One needed tomboy-ng added to repositories. (fine)
    The list of orphaned packages was just too much for me, I could not make a decision on all, so just assumed it would be ok 😉
    One physical is a very old dual core, went just fine.
    The other physical is my most important one running several things, including a nextcloud instance.
    This was my pain point.
    The /etc/letsencrypt folder was gone after the upgrade. I copied it back from timeshift. Nextcloud was happy again.
    php.ini needed a few adjustments, but expected.
    The upgrade went well. 😉
    Thanks a lot for all your work.

  31. Webapps pinned on cinnamon panel will start a new window instead of starting from the pinned icon, with their titles lost..

  32. Hi Mint Team, today I tried the Upgrade Tool on an (almost clean) LMDE4, but during upgrade process Cinnamon crashed into “Rückfallmodus” permanentely – so it was impossible to see what was going on.
    Later on LMDE5 Cinnamon was still in “Rückfallmodus”, also with the old LMDE4 kernel (4.19), so I went back to LMDE4 via Timeshift (which broke my GRUB).
    My machine is an ancient Fujitsu Amilo 1655G (AMD Turion ML-32 w/ 2GB RAM), which runs totally stable on LMDE4.

    1. Forgot something: Since Cinnamon crashed I could not see how far the Upgrade Tool was gone, so I decided to re-run it, but the machine was rebooted in the meanwhile and already in LMDE5 (with Cinnamon in “Rückfallmodus”). The tool complained about a lot of orphaned packages to be removed, I aborted the process. When I started in LMDE4 earlier, only some old kernels and anydesk were marked as orphaned and I clicked “Fix it”.
      The machine has an ATI Radeon Express 200m graphic card

  33. Nvidia driver (460.91.03 + NVIDIA GeForce GT 1030) not working after upgrade. Need to install version 470.103.01: apt install -t bullseye-backports nvidia-driver firmware-misc-nonfree

  34. I am trying to install Slimbook Battery in LMDE5 (I have it in Cinamon 20.3 and no instalaltion problem) and I can´t install it because it says that adding PPAs is not admitted.

    1. You need a Debian .deb file – not a Ubuntu .deb file to safely install into LMDE5.
      Compiling from source is an option.

  35. Hi, I run LMDE4 only with backports kernel 5.10. Started upgrade tool and “fixed” all old packages including the backported kernel. I got the “upgrade was successful” message, but the reboot didnt work. I realized, there is no kernel installed in boot-folder… Reverted with timeshift -> upgrade-tool -> no kernel installed -> installed kernel manually -> reboot -> everything works! Finest LMDE! Keep it up!

  36. Hello — I ran your upgrade tool and it went just fine. I got a “Module dm-raid45 not found in module.dep” error message and looked up the solution on the Linux Mint forum (purge the dmraid package, which is fine because I don’t use a RAID). So, good work and thank you very much!

  37. Failed with this popup:
    Your version of Linux Mint is ‘Debbie’. Only Linux Mint 20.3 ‘Una’ can be upgraded to Linux Mint 21 ‘Vanessa’
    ==========================
    [sudo] password for peter:
    peter@lmde4:~$
    Running check ‘Phase 1: Preparation’

    Running check ‘Linux Mint version’

    1. second try, reinstalled the upgrade tool, same error
      ====
      peter@lmde4:~$ sudo mintupgrade
      [sudo] password for peter:
      peter@lmde4:~$
      Running check ‘Phase 1: Preparation’

      Running check ‘Linux Mint version’
      ====

    2. thanks Clem.
      I installed debian-system-adjustments and the upgrade tool worked as expected.

  38. Maybe I missed it somewhere, but I’m just curious if the new MintUpgrade tool will be useful for older major releases, 18,19, etc … Or do we still need to use the previous instructions via commandline until you upgrade to Mint 20.x …?

  39. Hi, I tried mintupgrade both from the installation media (it failed with a disk full towards the end) and afterwards from a fresh LMDE installation.
    It went smoothly, and this is indeed a great tool, but it asked too many scattered questions.
    I launched the process, and it asked me to remove some usbx package.
    Then for time machine.
    I disabled it in the options, then it stopped to request the removal of a couple of linux headers packages.
    Then it notified of the upgrade simulation, and finally of the upgrade starting.
    I am under the impression this could be an “ask all the necessary questions, then run with no interruptions unless there’s an issue” process, and it would be more comfortable for the users.

    Even in its current state, it’s impressive

  40. Many thanks Clem and team. Seems like a lot of effort went into this to make things work well.

    I used the LMDE upgrade tool to upgrade to LMDE 5 today (8/5/22). It worked very well for my set up. Admittedly, it’s quite simple without too many exotic packages. Does have dual boot with windows – everything kept in tact and still boots. I did get about 8 or 9 orphan packages – decided not to keep them. Not missing them at the moment. Other packages (e.g. old kernels, old gcc) removed. Again, has not impacted my set up. The upgrade kept various settings and menus I had configured, so nothing surprising upon first boot. It may just be perception, but everything seems snappier and smoother compared to LMDE4.

    One comment/observation – (made already be some others) the process did seem to ask questions at different stages about keeping/removing things, which staggered things a little. Not sure if it can be made more joined up (done in one go perhaps) ?
    Having said that – it worked very well for me. Nice feedback from the GUI telling you what’s going on.

    Thank you so much.
    (LM user since LM10 and LMDE4)

  41. @CLEM
    Are you compiling the kernels for mint yourself? If yes, could you PLEASE add that options in this file by default?
    It is a huge advantage for every user!
    https://github.com/SoulInfernoDE/compile-kernel-from-source/blob/main/nogui/.config-fragment
    (Ignore line seven, eight and ten)
    This enables the ASHMEM and BINDER module in the kernels by default which enables you to use anbox and such to use Android apps (We are talking about open source android apps right eeeehr ;-P).
    So i can stop compiling them myself finally….

  42. Used for upgrade from debbie to elsie with no serious issues. Two apps did not run after the upgrade, Oracle Virtual box which was missing a library that required a manual install and Oracle sqldeveloper which lost the JDK.
    Pleased with the tool.
    Greetings!

  43. I just “successfully” finished the System update, but I can’t get out of the login screen.
    I already changed the password at startup, but it didn’t work.
    When I access Text Mode from the login screen (Ctrl+Alt+F2), I can log in, but no command is recognized.
    Can you help me?

Leave a Reply to sdibaja Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *