I think these were the instructions I was looking at:

https://linuxmint-user-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/upgrade-to-mint-20.html

I think I stopped reading already at the "purge PPAs and third-party repositories" part, it started sounding too complicated and risky. So, this actually does seem much better ("fresh upgrade"):

https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2

So basically, make a backup of your home directory and the software selection, wipe your current Linux installation, make a new fresh Linux installation, and restore your home directory and software selection.

This "fresh upgrade" does seem more straightforward, less risky, and you feel more like in control there ie. you know what is happening etc. Part C2 has good explanations why "fresh upgrade" might be a better idea anyway, than a release upgrade.

I don't really feel differently in Windows either, e.g. when I upgraded one machine from Windows 7 to 10, I preferred doing a clean install (first making a backup of personal files etc.). Sure it meant some programs needed to be reinstalled after that, but oh well...

Called it ;)

"Deluded","obnoxious","nobody likes you", "smart arse". In addition to the long list of other unwarranted insults at me.

Now it's your turn. Quote me where I personally attacked you for no reason. Else it never happened.

Anyways, I'm bored of you. If you didn't keep replying to me directly with slurs, I would have walked away from our 'discussion' (more like run away screaming in horror and disgust) a long time ago.

I'll let you have the last word, since you seem to suffer from lastworditis.

Maybe this is a good thread to ask something that has been bugging me for a long time:

Let's say you have a dual-boot system with Windows and Linux. What is the correct way to get rid of the Linux partition and all the traces of it, including grub(2)? That is, kinda revert the system back to the state before you installed Linux on the side of Windows?

I think I've tried it once in the distant past, and IIRC grub (I think it was already grub or grub2, and not its predecessor, e.g. LILO), and the "boot menu" still remained there even though I just wiped out the Linux partition from the system.

Then when I googled for how to get rid of that, the instructions mainly were "boot from your Windows installation CD, go to rescue command prompt, and run this command to rewrite the MBR to get rid of the boot menu...". Ok but I couldn't get it to work already back then, maybe I had a wrong type of installation CD because the suggested overwrite command didn't work for me, and I am unsure if those instructions would be valid nowadays anymore with these fancy GPT partitions and whatnot...

I think I'll still try to google for it, but if someone knows a foolproof and simple way, which doesn't include having to boot the system from some "Windows installation CD" or "rescue media"...

EDIT: Well, googling for "linux dual boot remove linux grub" helped. e.g.:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/429610/uninstall-grub-and-use-windows-bootloader

I think it was the "bootrec /fixmbr" thing that for some reason didn't work for me back when I tried it, even though it certainly was a MBR system with Windows XP...

kde dunno how much probably less than 1gb I didnt really care much with 16gb ram , most DE uses nearly the same anyway

I see. Well, it depends on the DE and the distro itself, on how many packages come pre-installed, for example. Something like GNOME will eat up more resources than, say, XFCE or KDE.
Anyway, I appreciate your reply. It's always interesting to know how different hardware handles different systems.

yeah and these should be tested after you set yourself in not with a clean install

Say, of all the distributions out there, why Manjaro KDE?
And while I'm still at asking questions, how do you find it?

So you lean towards a more modern look, with included drivers and software. Nothing wrong with that. That is a thing of beauty in the Linux world, you can set up your install however you want.

People can't fix nvidia issues because nvidia won't let them.
There are situations where it makes sense to run a game in a virtual machine. I can think of two examples off hand:
1. I used one for Exile: Escape From the Pit, which is so old it won't run in modern Windows, but could run in Wine.
2. I believe the TAS of nethack was done using KVM.

Keep in mind, that probably won't work on GPT. And if you wanted to avoid the perils of Grub2, ReFind would do as well.

Taking an almost trivial upgrade process and adding enough warnings in it to discourage people from using it, to me this is indeed breaking something functional ;)

When coming from Windows it might sound sensible, but as a long time Debian user I read that with horror!
I’m never going to use, or advise anyone to use, a Linux distribution that did not even get something as basic as a smooth upgrade path between releases.

Well, at work I've had to do some release upgrades both for Ubuntu (Server), and Oracle Linux (based on RedHat), and the Ubuntu upgrades failed twice, and the OEL upgrades once.

In one case (Ubuntu upgrade) grub2 became broken somehow during the release upgrade, and the whole system became unbootable. (Luckily for me we are talking about virtual servers here, so naturally I just went back to the situation just before the release upgrade with a snapshot).

When I googled for that, quite many others seemed to have had similar grub2 problems when doing do-release-upgrade between Ubuntu releases. Then again, on a couple of other Ubuntu servers, no such problem, so go figure.

Anyway, doing it from the clean table (be it Windows or Linux) also makes sure there is no some old crap left behind, just because.

Kinda of a very specific situation, but if you want to test the presence of drm on Steam games (there's even a thread for that here in the forums), but both systems you're using already have Steam installed and you don't want Steam tempering the results, using a virtual machine that never had Steam installed could help.

Ironically you could say that windows has degraded itself by copying some of worse aspects of Linux such as excess dependencies and removing service packs for endless updates.