mr.Lauren wrote:Anyway, I'll be back, but I've got a lot of study to do. A kernel reinstall sounds intimidating to me. I've got to go.
Totally understand. Most people have busy lives, I'm at a bit of an advantage since I'm retired.
Studying things extensively and carefully is a sane approach and the most likely path to success.
I'll try to distil the advice a bit for when you have the time to work on this but review everything in the thread and make sure to understand it before proceeding.
When you are ready, read on. No hurry.
If you are confident the system is not locking up due to a heat problem. (For example, have you done CPU intensive tasks in Mint for quite a bit of time without the system locking up.) And, you might do a file system check on the unmounted Debian partition from Mint.
As long as you boot Debian to the previous kernel, linux-image-3.16.0-4, it should be relatively easy and safe, the proverbial "piece of cake". If I remember correctly, that is the kernel your Debian system was booting to, check it with, uname -r, in a terminal window.
Remembering to update first then upgrade as we have discussed previously, whether you use apt-get or apt.
Then you can purge the linux-image-3.16.0-5 kernel and then upgrade your system, which if you do an, apt-get dist-upgrade, will probably pull the newer kernel back in along with the other updates.
Or
Do the same purge and use, apt full-upgrade, if you want to use apt rather than apt-get
Those are two command line possibilities in a terminal window.
If you prefer Synaptic, do a "Complete Removal" of linux-image-3.16.0-5, remember to "Reload" (same function as update), followed by "Mark All Upgrades", followed by "Apply" .
It might take awhile as you will have a lot of packages to upgrade in order to get to 8.10.
Sorry this is so long, I hope it is not too confusing. There are others here watching who could help even if I am not here when you get back.
Not going to wish you good luck, luck is not as important as being careful.