I’ve been wondering why Mint doesn’t seem to have an automatic major version upgrade built in? For those that have an opinion, do you agree with not having this? Why/why not?
I’ve been running Mint 21 for over a year now. I started using it not long before Mint 22 came out and have been dragging my feet on upgrading in fear of breaking something and having to reinstall (and losing something in the process). I’m in the process of setting up proper backups so I’ll probably do it after those are set up (or maybe wait until Mint 23).
You answer your question yourself with
Version upgrades are a big thing and unexpected things can happen. Would you be a happy user if the system auto updated to the next version and something truly broke? By forcing manual upgrade they can better inform users about possible unexpected things, and e.g. advice to do backups first. Thus users would be more prepared for this. Also version upgrades take a lot longer time than normal updates since it has update all packages, do other changes to the system etc.