14 DAY TRIAL // Those who want to upgrade their Linux Mint 18.3 "Sylvia" installations to the recently released Linux Mint 19 "Tara" operating system can now do so as the upgrade path is officially open.
Now that Linux Mint 19 "Tara" has been officially released and it's available to download as Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce editions, the development team announced today that the upgrade path from the Linux Mint 18.3 "Sylvia" operating system is now open for all three editions, except the KDE one which is no longer supported.
However, upgrading is recommended only for users who want to explore the new features of Linux Mint 19 "Tara" or they need a fix for an issue with Linux Mint 18.3 "Sylvia" as Linux Mint project leader warns everyone not to upgrade if their installations aren't broken. He reminds users that the Linux Mint 17 series is supported until 2019 and the Linux Mint 18 series until 2021.
"You might want to upgrade to Linux Mint 19 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 19, upgrading blindly for the sake of running the latest version does not make much sense," said Clement Lefebvre.
Here's how to upgrade to Linux Mint 19 "Tara"
Upgrading your Linux Mint 18.3 "Sylvia" installations to Linux Mint 19 "Tara" is pretty straightforward, but before attempting to upgrade, you should make sure you have a recent backup of your most precious files using the Timeshift utility. Then, open a terminal emulator and install the mintupgrade package with the "apt install mintupgrade" command.
With the mintupgrade package installed, you can upgrade to Linux Mint 19 "Tara" by running the "mintupgrade download" command in the terminal emulator to download the required packages, and then the "mintupgrade upgrade" command to apply the upgrades. After a successful upgrade process, you'll have to reboot your computer. For more details, check out the official upgrade instructions.