Fresh install?

[David McGlone]

On Wednesday 15 October 2008 1:51:34 pm Derek Broughton wrote:
> Paul Lemmons wrote:
> > There is something that has been bugging me for several years. While
> > fairly new to Ubuntu I have been using Linux as my primary OS since
> > Fedora core 2. The thing that has been a irritation for all of that time
> > is the repeated recommendation to do a "Clean Install" instead of an
> > upgrade.
>
> Where?  Not here.  There'll always be some people who swim against the
> flow, but Debian-based distros aren't intended to be installed clean with
> every release.
>
> > Am I the only one with such a positive experience with the upgrade
> > process? Do more of you upgrade or rebuild?
>
> I generally upgrade, but I'm typically buying either a new system, or at
> least a new drive, every third release or so, and then they get fresh
> installs.
>
> > Why the constant advice to
> > backup your system, remember all of the apps you installed and then
> > trash it to install clean and restore apps and files with a prayer that
> > you did not miss anything?
>
> Because you can?  With Windows, I _couldn't_ do that.  With Linux, I can.
> Install the base system, copy the old /home over it.  Install the packages
> from /etc/apt/installed.txt (not a stock file - I create that), copy /etc
> & /var from the old system.  Done.

Ok this piques my interest. why copy /etc and /var? what if the fresh install 
made changes to some files in those directories that your backups of /etc 
and /var didn't have?

I usually only backup .kde/share/apps and .kde/share/config to a separate 
partition. All the rest of my saved documents, music, and everything else is 
also saved automatically on this separate partition as well which resides on 
a separate HD. When I do a fresh install (which I am soooooo guilty of) I 
cherry pick my files from the backups which is usually just settings for 
kontact and my contacts and mail server settings and the look and feel of my 
desktop.



-- 
David M.