As Linux Mint doesn't feature an upgrade utility, the only option for someone to move from one version to another is to reinstall the entire distribution. New versions of Linux Mint are released every 6-7 months, and most releases are only supported for 9 months. This means that in order to keep updated, you may need to reinstall it twice a year. Linux Mint does feature Long Term Support (LTS) releases, which are published around every 2 years. However, LTS releases may lack the hardware support necessary for their installation on current machines. As non-LTS releases are published more frequently, it's only natural for them to include newer kernels, which in turn support newer hardware. So, what do you do? This appendix is dedicated to helping you overcome this limitation by learning how to retain your home directory and packages between installations.

In this appendix, we will discuss the following topics: