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Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
One thing to remember about Linux Mint. Each release has it's own repository. (For those who don't know, that is a pile of various programs vetted to work with this particular Linux). Linux Mint is designed to default its app load to load from the repository. After several years (longer for a long release version) those repositories go away!.
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<blink> Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, which is in turn based on Debian. Ubuntu, the last I looked, did not have OS version specific repositories. Use apt-get to access the repository, and you only get shown stuff that will run under the version you have. IIRC, Ubuntu has a separate repository for older versions for folks with special needs. I also have various PPAs configured to get newer versions of things that have not yet made it into the official repository.
(Ubuntu has gotten flak for not having the most recent versions of things in the official repo. No surprise here. Like Red Hat, they offer supported commercial installations, and will want to make sure they
can support what is in the repository, so bleeding edge stuff will need to go through an internal quality control effort before becoming part of the official repo.)
And the relationship between OS version and program version isn't the sort of lock step you see on Windows. Each new Windows release adds to the Windows API. This means limited backward compatibility. Programs require a particular API version and won't install/run on an older version of Windows that doesn't have it.
When I installed Win2K Pro on the machine I mentioned about, I had some stuff that required at least XP and would not run on it. There are likely programs now that require at least Win7 and won't run on XP.
New Linux versions may include kernel updates, but I can recall almost nothing I use that would not install and run on an older Ubuntu version. Drivers will be an exception, as anything that deals directly with the hardware may have kernel version dependencies
I will accept your word that you found it worthwhile to pay for a version specific copy of the repository you use. You are the first Linux user I know of who has found it necessary to do that. Most folks simply upgrade Linux versions.
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One of the quirks of Linux. Also, newer hardware than the release period software may have driver problems. The 2 Celeron machines I'm putting together work fine under Mint 17.1, but their built-in wifi card does not. 19.1 will support those hardware drivers. . . .
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That sort of thing bites on any OS.
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Dennis