Distro Migration

electric_nan@lemmy.ml to Linux@lemmy.ml – 25 points –

Hi, Linux! I've been using Linux for many years now, but haven't moved distros in awhile. I'm considering it now, and I really would like to migrate over all my customized system and software settings. So far, I am thinking of backing up everything that begins with a dot in my home folder, all of my systemd service files, and user/root crontabs. I know this is missing some things, but I'm not sure what. Any advice/warnings/examples people care to share?

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You could start by having /home on a different partition. So that you simply can mount it in your new system and have the same settings and files as previously.

This would be a big help, and I used to do that. I've actually heard that this can cause some problems between distros though.

My biggest problem with it is forgetting which system I booted into when I use the same desktop environments :P and yeah configs can get out of date and inconsistent but I usually just blow them away since I'm not into customizing my desktop much

It shouldn't as long as you make sure that the numeric uid/gid of your user account matches the one from the original system. If that's not feasible then you can chown the tree.

Hmm, this is actually something I will be fixing from the last time I repurposed this PC. What exactly do you mean chown the tree? I know what chown is, but what does tree mean in this context?

tree in this context would mean the whole directory, its files and its subdirectories. Like the whole Directory Tree.

I am sorry but I really don't have any constructive advice to offer. I am more curious what distros you are considering. If you haven't thought about using Arch, please give it serious consideration because it is nice and lightweight. Yes, the install process is terse but it leaves you with a good system that you really know what's going on.

No worries. I haven'ttried actual Arch since circa 2008 (not impressed then haha). A couple years ago I ran Manjaro, which was fine. I am definitely partial to Debian/Apt based systems though. Been using Mint for a long time, but wanting to switch to Siduction.

Can't give you any "advice" other than to "just let it happen" -- you'll need to get those linux commands written on your forehead anyways. i.e don't backup anything, rewrite/reinstall the whole thing from scratch until you've memorized (at the very least) 80% of it.

t. Did this exact thing for a couple months.

I dunno. I like to have a fresh start sometimes. Take your documents, maybe just your fav config files, and plop them into a fresh install. Not everyone's cup of tea but I like it.

You're not going to be able to take anything for granted. Get a new disk, load out the whole new distro on the new disk mount your old disc and start copying stuff over. Services aren't just going to copy you're going to need the binaries and all their dependencies. Then they're dependencies dependencies. The only sane path is to do installs and then bring your customizations forward.

/.config is the main one, I guess. I would recommend setting up btrfs and using subvolumes for different distros. Makes life so much simpler.