Operating Systems > Linux and UNIX

Installing a different distro

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Jenda:
How do you install a Linux distro, if you already have one installed and don't want to go through the trouble of backing up the whole contents of your hard drive?
I suppose Linux is capable of doing this, since with all the disk partitions, you shouldn't have to format the whole disk.
Anyone know?

Lord C:
Depends which distro you are installing, but as I know you use mdk9.2 - if you were to install mdk 10.2 you would just tell mdk installer to keep your current partitions , it would then upgrade the nessacary.

If on the other hand you were going to install Ubuntu, when Ubuntu asks if you want to clear the hard drive, or manually edit partitons - you tell it which partitons to keep (Home) and which to format (/usr/local etc).

Not the clearest post i've ever made, but I hope it makes sence :)

All your personal data should be stored on /home so just don't format the /home partition :)

KernelPanic:
If you don't have a seperate home partition this can be tricky, i'd suggest backing up your home drive to seperate removable media. This way you can take care not to include your dotfiles and dotdirs (WM configuration etc.) in the backup - these may screw up the new distro if it uses different software versions.

Additionally take care to export your emails to an mbox and copy your bookmarks from you browser as these are usually stored in .mozilla, .email-client, .whatever somewhere.

Jenda:
My particular case would be mdk9.2 > Ubuntu, I think. Or at least my first transformation.
Sounds good. SO all my stuff would be in my /home partition? I think I have a separate partition for that.
I cannot check right now, because I am in Canada, as indicated

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