&gt; <i>Last time I looked on Mint there was no support for upgrading the system.</i><p>Some years ago, the recommended way to upgrade Mint was indeed to do a full reinstall [1]. For a couple past years, there has been a simpler way, involving a bit of command line acrobatics [2]. Still not good for your mother-in-law.<p>Apparently [3] only in 2015 Mint finally started to have the &quot;normal&quot; way, where you just click on an upgrade button, and the system upgrades itself. But even now, this does not upgrade the kernel. Weird.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.linuxmint.com&#x2F;tutorial&#x2F;view&#x2F;2" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.linuxmint.com&#x2F;tutorial&#x2F;view&#x2F;2</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;hgomez&#x2F;7074150" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;hgomez&#x2F;7074150</a><p>[3] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.linuxmint.com&#x2F;?p=2871" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.linuxmint.com&#x2F;?p=2871</a>