I’m a noob.
Can someone point me at a good tutorial for moving from Minxt XFCM to Mate please.
I’ve been using mint for about a year but was blown away by the 17.10 alpha. Quite frankly [redmond theme] looks like exactly want I want in a desktop.
I know it’s an alpha - but seriously I ran it for a week and it was solid.
Or should i just nuke and pave?
Hi OldNerd,
Everyone has to start somewhere, it’s not a bad thing. 
My general thought on this is to back up your data to an external device and an off-site location, check your data integrity is there by verifying the content, and start from fresh, more so with different OS platforms. Yes you could keep your /home directory if it’s separate, but there may well be configuration files there that could interact badly with a new platform.
The recommendation is to install 17.04 and then upgrade to 17.10 when it arrives in about a months time. This way you’re going from a clean, officially supported version, to another stable supported version, without having to deal with any undetected bugs in the alpha/beta releases.
In the end it’s your call, but from the standpoint of staying on the safe side, it’s what I’ve done for years.
May be a little late but the easiest thing to do to back up any Linux distro is to back up your home folder either on an external drive or a separate partition. This saves all config fills you have made on that desktop environment and all your data but you will have to reinstall any programs you may have had
Thanks for the information.
Looks like a nuke and pave is the way to go.
Kinda surprised there isn’t a “just apt -get install package(s) X, Y, Z and P” option seeing as they are both based off ubuntu.
Though perhaps a nuke and pave could be interpreted as the ultimate ‘apt-get’ method 