Best way to migrate Ubuntu 8.04 to Mint 11?

[Cato2]

First time on the Mint forums...

I've been using Linux for many years, most recently Ubuntu - I'm migrating my main Linux desktop and another desktop PC to Mint because it seems more stable than Ubuntu and lets me avoid the whole Unity / GNOME 3 mess (and should have a saner approach to GNOME 3 without forcing rapid adoption). Mint does look really nice and installed quite easily alongside Ubuntu.

I have quite a customized Ubuntu setup on both desktops, mostly in the home directories but with some customizations in /etc, /usr/local, and elsewhere - I've been using the excellent etckeeper to track changes in /etc. Also used checkinstall for almost all build-from-source packages.

So...

• What's the best way to migrate all my customizations and settings into Linux Mint 11, GNOME version?
• I'm already multibooting Ubuntu and Mint and will share the home directory data files. Is it advisable to share the home directory's dot-files between the two, or will that mess up GNOME and apps due to changes in config details?

I have read the Mint Upgrade Guide which seems very sensible and I will use the same principles.

I'm happy with scripting and command line - if anyone has migration scripts or HOWTOs that I could modify to fit, that would be great.

[Detonate]

Hardy Heron (8.04) to Katya (11.04) is a huge jump. If you tried to copy all of your settings and files, a lot of stuff would be broken. I would suggest that you backup all of you documents and other personal files, then do a clean install of Katya. As Linux Mint comes with a lot of stuff installed that is missing in Ubuntu, it won't take you long to tweak the new system to you liking. It is likely that this would take less time and produce better results that trying to fix what would be broken if you tried to save all of your system settings. That's my opinion.

[Cato2]

Yes, I know it's a big jump and I'm sure some things won't work at all and will need reconfiguring from scratch. Just wanted to get a view on how best to do this and avoid having to reconfigure everything, as I have about 3 years' worth of customisations.

This posting addresses a similar problem (multibooting different distros with a shared home directory) - consensus is that it's best to not share the config files, hence a separate home directory with links to the data subdirectories is recommended.

This posting has quite a useful list of the directories that would probably not work if migrated - really the GNOME related ones, as I'd expect: gconf, .gnome, .gnome2, .gnome2_private, .gconf, .gconfd, .config, and .conf

I will move the current home directory somewhere else and start with a fresh directory, then pull across the dot-files that are likely to work. Shame it's such a manual process but it's more likely to work that way.

I suspect most of the /etc files will migrate more easily, while the /usr/local/bin apps will need to be rebuilt.

[chiefjim]

I'll answer on how I've assisted others moving from other distros to Mint.

Assuming their original installations had separate /home folders. I deleted all hidden files except for things like .thunderbird, .mozilla, and .purple. If they were using any type of calendar file I copied those over to their documents folder.

Then on install formatted the root but retained the home folders.

Never had a problem afterwards.