Linux Mint 20.3 Users Can Now Upgrade to Linux Mint 21, Here’s How

The upgrade path from Linux Mint 20.3 “Una” to Linux Mint 21 “Vanessa” is now open to finally allow users to upgrade their installations to the latest and greatest release of the popular Ubuntu-based distribution.

Linux Mint 21 “Vanessa” was just released this weekend and comes with a newer base than Linux Mint 20.3 “Una”, from the Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) operating system series, as well as newer Linux kernel and graphics stacks, and other major internal changes. Check out the new features in Linux Mint 21.

Due to these major internal changes, the upgrade process from Linux Mint 20.3 to Linux Mint 21 will be a bit laborious, but, fortunately, Linux Mint 21 comes with a new Upgrade Tool designed to make upgrades between major Linux Mint release significantly easier for newcomers.

The new Linux Mint upgrade tool is fully configurable and comes with features like a fully graphical upgrade experience, the ability to perform more checks to ensure the upgrade process will go smoothly in different scenarios, the ability to preserve the user’s choice of mirrors, and warnings about orphaned packages.

Here’s how to upgrade Linux Mint 20.3 to Linux Mint 21

First, make sure that you have a backup of your most important files, you know, just in case something goes wrong, and ensure that your installation is up to date. There’s always a risk when upgrading between major OS versions due to incompatibilities of some third-party packages you might have installed.

With Linux Mint 21 the upgrade process is done through a new utility that the Linux Mint team worked on during the development cycle of Linux Mint 21. The utility is called mintupgrade (Upgrade Tool) and while it launches from the command line it provides users with a full graphical upgrade process.

Upgrade Tool was first made available a few months ago for Linux Mint Debian Edition 4, allowing users to upgrade to Linux Mint Debian Edition 5. But, as of today, August 5th, 2022, it’s also available for Linux Mint 20.3 “Una” users who want to upgrade their installations to Linux Mint 21 “Vanessa”.

You can install mintupgrade by running the sudo apt install -y mintupgrade command in the Terminal app. Once the mintupgrade package was successfully installed, you will have to run the sudo mintupgrade command to start the upgrade process.

Then, all you have to do is follow the on-screen instructions to upgrade your Linux Mint 20.3 installation to Linux Mint 21.

The new Upgrade Tool has several phases. It will first perform some sanity checks, ask you to perform a backup using the Timeshift utility (you can disable that in Upgrade Tool’s settings), simulate and download packages (showing you what packages will be upgraded and removed), and perform the actual upgrade.

After the upgrade process completes, you’ll be shown a list of orphaned packages that will be removed if you don’t want to keep them. Of course, the entire upgrade process will take some time depending on your Internet bandwidth and computer specs.