You mean migrating data to new hardware? Or do you mean clicking "Yes, please upgrade" (or typing `sudo do-release-upgrade`) doesn't provide enough options?
My main dev machine started as a Thinkpad running Ubuntu 9.04 and has not only been upgraded many times but has migrated its hardware twice and is now an Intel NUC on my desktop. Never reinstalled anything.
I used to reinstall Windows machines regularly because they'd bog down to uselessness or stop working after a few months. Since it's only a games machine I have learned the best maintenance program for Windows is to toss the machine every few years and replace it with brand-new hardware and software and reinstall the games from original media (mostly Steam). Also, never reboot because it will bog down my home internet connection doing a massive set of downloads from all MS and all the driver vendors and resynching all its trackers. Also also keep it isolated in the DMZ because it should be considered asymptomatic but infected at all times.
I'm using Fedora as my main OS (on the laptop since 2011, on the desktop since 2015) and here it's easy to upgrade to the next release, I've been doing it for years (with only 1 full reinstall at some point):
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/dnf-system-u...
[0] https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/deployment/autom...
For me, it’s reasons like that which keep me on Apple: 90% of my basic computer operation/maintenance usecases are already taken care of, or have first party software to take care of it.
I leave finessing linux operations and programs for my day job.
Run a rolling release then like Manjaro or another Arch based system. I’ve been running the latest release of my distro for years, never had to reinstall.
Also, there are plenty of free backup apps for Linux like Deja Dupe or Back-in-time. I don’t really bother with them though because all of my important stuff goes into git, even my dot files.
i have all my program settings files saved in a syncthing folder and the script creates softlinks where those files are supposed to be. dconf let's you backup and restore a ton of settings in one go. the only thing I have to do after the script is done is log into websites and then my computer is fully set up
The Microsoft issue was I’d bought a laptop which came with an Office trial, but wanted to enable Office using a license I bought through work. It required uninstalling the trial version, running a power shell command line tool to clean it up, then install the required SKU of Office. The MS rep was also very knowledgeable, logged on remotely with my permission and I watched the whole process. It took a while, but the engineer knew exactly what to do and did a great job.
That was the first time I’d had phone support from Apple or Microsoft. I wasn’t too surprised at Apple, I’ve had great support from the stores before so that extending that to over the phone wasn’t too much of a stretch. I was pleasantly surprised at the speed and quality of the support from Microsoft though, I really couldn’t have asked for more. It’s just brain bindingly ridiculous that getting their software, that’s supposedly already on the blasted machine to actually work took such a torturous set of steps to perform.
I suppose that’s all incidental to the thread, but anyway. The things that annoy me about Linux are the lack of system upgrade options, you basically have to reinstall from scratch every time, and the awkwardness of system backups. I’m spoiled by a Time Machine I suppose, it’s the thing I miss the most on Windows as well.
[EDIT - Looks like I'm missing some options on keeping Linux up to date, thanks for the tips]