It may be considered a reasonable downside that Linux Mint doesn't contain an official method of moving from one release to another. However, in this appendix, we were able to easily work around that. Not only did we get a completely new and fresh installation of Linux Mint, but we were also able to retain our packages and installed applications as well. Essentially, we actually did upgrade from one release to another. While the Backup Tool is exclusive to Mint, the idea of retaining a home partition between an old installation and a new one is not. Retaining your home directory while reinstalling your distribution is actually a very common practice in the Linux world; I am yet to see a distribution that doesn't allow you to do this. In fact, you can even move from one distribution to a completely different one and retain your data this way if you choose to.