How to safely upgrade from Mint 17.3 cinnamon to 18.1 cinnamon?

Question

mint

Good night everybody!
The question is as in the title, there is a working machine on it with Linux Mint 17.3 cinnamon installed, also the system has php + all sorts of its perks like curl, etc. MySql, apache2 and all sorts of other things.......... ..chips.
How can I update to 18.1, so that later nothing would break and I wouldn’t have to install everything on a new one, I’m just too lazy))

Answer 1

0) Be sure (!) to make a full backup.
1) Run the mintupdate utility and update to mint 18.
2) check that everything is working