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Linux Mint 17.3 Officially Released (softpedia.com)
prisoninmate sends news that Linux Mint 17.3 "Rosa" has been officially released. Following a few technical problems with their website, the Mint developers posted release announcements for both the Cinnamon and MATE flavors of the operating system. "Both Linux Mint 17.3 "Rosa" editions ship with the same improvements for some of the operating system's core components and in-house built apps, such as Software Sources, which is now more reliable, responsive, and fast, Update Manager, which can perform more checks, Driver Manager, which is now more robust, and Login Screen." Here are the release notes (Cinnamon, MATE), and the summaries of new features (Cinnamon, MATE).
I started on LinuxMint 17 and rolled into 17.1 and 17.2 without any problems, and I don't expect any problems for 17.3.
The thing to remember is that LinuxMint 17.x series is based off of the Ubuntu 14.04LTS. So the upgrade from 17.2 -> 17.3 is like going from Ubuntu 14.04.2 -> 14.04.3. The major changes are to the parts of the software stack that are added by the LinuxMint team like the Cinnamon DE and the Mint* series of apps. Although this release does include a kernel upgrade from 3.16 -> 3.19, that still isn't exactly bleeding edge. And an upgrade for LibreOffice from 4.4 -> 5. So these are all pretty safe upgrades. These aren't Arch style rolling releases, morel like Windows service pack upgrades. There shouldn't be any major changes to the core of the system like switching to systemd or moving from python2.7 -> python3 or anything like that.
Also note that the upgrade will not install automatically. To do the upgrade you have to open the Update Manger like you do for normal upgrade, and select "Upgrade to 17.3" from the Edit menu, or something like that (sorry it's been a while). Accurate instructions will be posted on the LinuxMint blog in a little while. If you are concerned just wait a week or so and see if people on the forums have had any issues.