“I’ve been burned a few times with the zeal to upgrade.”
Yeah, it is very un-Linux of them to start doing the same thing MS does and render our equipment obsolete forcing us to buy newer equipment. That is just not a trait of Linux, it is a trait of MS to pull that tactic. They are slowly creeping towards the proprietary MS model. I am personally not going to put up with this scam.
I am going to move to rolling distros instead even if I have to play with the window dressing and apps myself. Heck with them, I’m not playing the MS style game again. That game is one of the main reasons I dumped MS in the first place. That whole mess between Win7 and Win10 was enough for me...
What really makes me mad is when the new versions are nothing but a new group of apps packaged. No need for a whole new distro version just because one new app is packaged with it and that is the only change. I can just go add that app if I want it. No need for a whole new version centered around just one new app available. Mint is getting bad about this. Even more so than the Ubuntu it is based on.