Is it possible to rollback / downgrade Linux Mint?

Question

I have a box upgrade from Linux 18.3 to 19.1, and it does not display my preferred theme's widgets correctly.

Is there a good way to downgrade the windowing and/or the whole installation back to how things were on 18.3?

Thanks,

Answer 1

Sort of-- I had a similar situation. I upgraded my mint and when I rebooted I no longer had network access. It took me a while to figure out that not only had they removed the specific driver both my network cards used, it was no longer available under the current release.

SOOOO I'm thinking... oh no, I have a ton of work to get done and am not trusting a downgrade. I simply went into GRUB2, told it to boot the previous kernel and voila. Working again.

When your system boots, the GRUB loader usually gives you a chance to pick a previous kernel. Try that and see if it works.

I then hard-coded my GRUB2 so that it defaults to that kernel and won't go to a newer one.

Cheers! -D

Answer 2

I don't think this is a kernel-related issue. It was failing to display 3rd party widget controls, as if they were no longer valid under current rules, while displaying built-in widgets without a hitch.

I'm pretty sure the kernel could deal with my graphics card, because Cinnamon displays a warning to the top right of the screen complaining if it has to use the CPU for graphics card work, and that warning never appeared with the upgrade.

I did things the "dumb" way: copied my home directory contents to a removable drive, tried seeing if the functionality was working under 19(.0), and after seeing the same issue there, reinstalled Mint 18.3 and restored my home directory.

There were a few additional details needed like reinstalling Chrome and cairo-dock, but so far the issues I've seen have been easy enough for me to fix.