[ubuntu-uk] Pasting home directory into new and version upgrade installs?

[Tyler J. Wagner]

On Saturday 18 Sep 2010 02:00:37 Liam Proven wrote:
> Get them onto the LTS release *now* and then you can safely leave 'em
> there 'til 2012. *Don't* put them onto 9.10, it's already obsolescent.
> 
> Me, personally, I'd say wipe & reload. It's easier than doing 9.04 ->
> 9.10 followed by 9.10 -> 10.04.

I concur. I do this kind of reinstall all the time (we use Ubuntu on the 
server and desktop at my company). Just make a backup of /home and reinstall. 
Take the opportunity to move to ext4 while you are it; it's noticeably faster 
for many things.

Using an old copy of your home directory will be fine as long as files are owned 
by the same userid after reinstall. Very little in Gnome, at least, goes wrong 
with upgrades. KDE apps between 9.04 and 10.04 may be a little more fussy, but 
if so just delete that app's config and data:

rm -rf ~/.kde/share/apps/digikam
rm ~/.kde/share/config/digikam*

Regards,
Tyler

-- 
"Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from
others."
   -- "The Robustness Principle", or Postel's Law, from RFC 793