[hugs]

Yes, they lost me on the lack of upgrades. When a new version came out, I saw there were a few random blogs posts on how to do a very much unsupported upgrade through the command line. But I avoided the risk. Since I'd have to do a reinstall anyway, I downloaded stock Ubuntu and never looked back. And I was a happy Elementary OS user. Alas, I can understand where they were coming from, though, on that decision. They are/were a small, scrappy team and the QA effort for testing upgrade processes is non-trivial. They had to pick their battles on what to support. I didn't agree with their choice, but I can empathize with them on why they did it.

[gjsman-1000]

I 100% agree, they can prioritize however they want, but please for the love of well-meaning techies, drop the "replacement for Windows and macOS" talk, and make a pop-up warning that reinstallation is going to be necessary in the future before you download, so that you don't spread it everywhere only to discover you've just sunk everyone.

It's really not that hard, just a "Note: Elementary OS does not support in-place upgrades. You will need to reinstall Elementary OS every time a new major version comes out every 2 years. If you want to support our in-place upgrade development, please donate. < Donate > < I Understand >".

[hugs]

Yeah, the lack of a sane upgrade path really is a massive issue that should be labeled more clearly. (And a headline level bullet point in any written review of it.) The lack of a sane upgrade path completely undercuts their marketing message.

[28304283409234]

Seriously, how is this a big deal? Make a backup of $HOME, restore it after fresh install of OS. Done!

[tjohns]

In a managed corporate environment (or heck, even with family members), asking users to reinstall the OS themselves is a big deal.

Also, what about apps? Non-standard drivers? Background services? System configuration?