Painless Re-installation Plan for people moving to Ubuntu

[Ian Soutar]

Here is a simple way to "fix" a bad system or move from one distro to 
another.

This would offer a way for people to move from one distro to Ubuntu very 
easily.


1/ I started with Suse installed.

2/ I ran a Knoppix live cd and used it to erase the operating system but 
I kept my "/home" directory.

3/ I renamed home to "/home_old"

4/ I did a Knoppix install to hd and elected to NOT FORMAT the drive. 
Formatting was not required because at this point it was blank excent 
for "/home_old". I selected the same file system of course. Flexibility 
in choosing Reiser, Ext3 or Ext2 are important.

5/ Finally I booted the system and simply copied or moved all the stuff 
I wanted like email configuration, music etc. to the new home directory.

6/ You can move hidden files like ".mozilla" or ".thunderbird" and your 
email still works just like you left it in the different distro.

7/ The great thing about this method of moving from distro to distro is 
that you leave behind all traces of the old operating system but keep 
all your good stuff untouched.

8/ With Kubuntu first release Dapper I had to go to a root shell and 
type sudo konqueror twice to get file managers that instantly move data.

Voila ! a new O/S with everything important retained.

The whole process of moving from Suse to Knoppix took a half hour. 
Everything was retained and worked perfectly.

I have used this system and kept my home directory as I migrated through 
6 distros!!! But in the end Kubuntu was my favourite.

Kanotix has automated this whole process but I prefer to do it manually. 
Sometimes I use Knoppix to do it and sometimes I use Kanotix ... wish I 
could use Kubuntu but it now Formats my precious data.

I know you can do this on the non-live install but it used to work 
perfectly in the first release of dapper until someone decided to break 
it. There is NO DEVELOPMENT work involved. Just put that install back to 
the way it existed in the original Dapper release.

Ian.