XFCE,Mate and Cinnamon are all ready for upgrade. But this is not your beginners upgrade and Mint is kind enough to say so right out of the starting blocks. More advanced users are given ample instructions on how to do an upgrade, but those instructions will tell you you need a fair command of terminal commands, both giving them and understanding the reply. As my skills are laughable I only got a 1/3 of the way though the instructions before deciding this would be a good time (supported for the next 5 years) to start over and install a fresh (like there's a difference) install of mint. Ulyana is a monster update! Lots to make a new install (if one must) well worth the time. Reduce your rez to 1040X or you will have to put your nose on your monitor to read a damn thing. That sounds like a grip and it is. How often do I get to grip about anything in mint? Almost never. But I have to say what is with the 1080 thing? Why not just adapt to the rez I give you? But this may only effect those who use large (55 inch in y case) monitors That aside I once again had to jump about to get the Font size and scaling into usable shape and size. It seems Banshee (music player) has been dropped. Rythumbox and Audacious both made the cut. If your a beginner, and don't want to start from scratch....Wait a while on this one. Mint usually continues to improve, you may face an easier upgrade tomorrow. If you do make the jump let us know ho w you like Mint 20
My wife is on Mint 20 Cinnamon edition. She was actually using Arch on her system, but since she is most definitely not a Linux enthusiast, I had to handle all system maintenance and updates. As much as I love to tinker with and maintain my own system, it became a bit of a chore to manage her system as well. So after looking around a bit we landed on Mint. She liked the look of it, and after having used it for a while now she also enjoys being able to handle everything herself. It is a very good Linux distro for people who are not comfortable with the terminal, and it comes with pretty much everything you need already installed. In our case, we installed Mint 20, so there was no upgrade involved. But if you only have some personal files to keep, it's usually pretty simple to just store them on a USB or external hard drive while you perform a fresh install.
You have me on your wave length. Been using Mint since the 6 or7 release. it has been an unmitigated joy! sometimes there are Improvement that don't always mean all that much. but there have been big jumps in quality as well. 20 looks to be setting a new bar. I use Mint for all the reasons your wife does./ Ask around about how much work by my friends needed to do just getting me past an update that usually knocked my install off it's pins. glad your wife has found her independence, it's a great feeling knowing you can go forward on ones own without having to bother others. Great you were willing to help her!! Better that you helped find independece..Just ask her!! LOL p.s. did you run into a font size problem...and what size is her monitor/ If I hadn't roughly known where to go to fix it I might have been trapped for days (instead of hours) trying to read in teeny tiny print.
I will eventually upgrade to Mint 20. Normally I wait a few weeks or even a month cause I'm in no hurry. My 9 systems are stable and working fine. I've upgraded several of them from 18 up to 19.3 so I may have to break-down and do a fresh install at some point. I know Operating Systems can leave residual data after every upgrade. But my 1TB drives can handle it fine. Some day I'm going completely SSD on all my PCs, but for now just two of them have SSDs.
She was on Windows before she married me and I showed her the wonders of Linux, she's still upset about that. Well not really, but I did give her an Arch system, which she had no idea how to manage herself. She was on the Gnome desktop, which she was okay with, but she is much happier with Cinnamon on Mint. More importantly, she can handle updates herself and hardly needs my help for anything. She did point out that Mint reminded her a lot about Windows, so she quickly felt at home. I'm still at awe that you've got 9 systems, but then again I probably could have that too except I usually give away older computers when I get new ones. I don't really have space to keep older computers around and there's usually always someone I know who would like to take over a system I decided to retire.
