Installing Ubuntu over Mint

[unprinted]

The instability of Firefox 26/27 under Mint16 has got me considering going back to Ubuntu. FF crashes several times a week here using Mint MATE x86 edition in a way that it simply didn't until FF 25 and simply doesn't with Xubuntu.

I would quite like to keep MATE (but I see that should be in the Ubuntu repositories from 14.04).

How difficult would it be to 'downgrade' to a Ubuntu variant without reinstalling everything? Is it possible?

[killer de bug]

It may be simplier to just downgrade Firefox, isn't it?

[craig10x]

I'd do a clean install of ubuntu 14.04 and add mate to it...that would be the best way to go...

[Condorman]

If Firefox is the issue I would strongly suggest switching to Chrome or Chromium. Firefox behaves fine on my mint 16 Cinnamon, but I prefer Chrome tbh.

[Flemur]

Firefox 26/27 under Mint16 has got me considering going back to Ubuntu

FWIW, I've used FF versions up to v30 with Mint 16, and no problems with hanging or crashing.

However, I do have problems with some of the design changes they've made on purpose, so I use FF v21.
(I see only trivial - but sometimes annoying - differences between the versions; v30 has ugly space-wasting tabs, v>24 or so has bad "seach in page" behavior, the official current version says all my add-ons are disabled, but they're working...)

Install any version you want from here:
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org ... /releases/
Just extract the archive into /usr/lib/firefox, or /opt/firefox. Much easier than reinstalling an OS.