Page 1 of 1

reinstalling without actually doing so

Posted: Fri May 02, 2014 7:02 am
by TANUJMINTLINUX
[ continuation of topic http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 0&t=166472 ]

A question ?
Suppose i have apps like wine , callibre and some other games on my LINUX MINT16 XFCE installation.
Now , for some reason i want to reinstall mint .
"is there any way that i can protect all these program wine , callibre,cinnamonDE etc. so i do not need to REINSTALL
EVERYTHING BACK "
please explain in detail and simply

Re: reinstalling without actually doing so

Posted: Fri May 02, 2014 8:23 am
by Kalyk
Mint has got a tool MintBackup.
It can backup and restore your personal data, but it can also backup a list of apps you installed from the repositories.
That list can then be used as input for "restore", where the restore is really just reinstalling everything you had at the time of backup without you having to select everything again.

Re: reinstalling without actually doing so

Posted: Fri May 02, 2014 10:02 am
by Dyfi
Synaptic has a similar feature. It can create a script of installed software which can be later used on a fresh install.

Re: reinstalling without actually doing so

Posted: Fri May 02, 2014 10:55 am
by austin.texas
You can take it one step further. Before you re-install with the Mint Backup or Synaptic script, you can copy all of the .deb files from your old Mint to your new Mint. Copy all of the .deb files in /var/cache/apt/archives/ to the new /var/cache/apt/archives/ folder.
That way the programs are already downloaded, saving you time and bandwidth - unless there is a newer version, in which case, the newer version will be downloaded and installed.

You can copy the hidden files and folders related to the programs you want, also.

Re: reinstalling without actually doing so

Posted: Tue May 27, 2014 12:11 pm
by usbtux
austin.texas wrote:You can take it one step further. Before you re-install with the Mint Backup or Synaptic script, you can copy all of the .deb files from your old Mint to your new Mint. Copy all of the .deb files in /var/cache/apt/archives/ to the new /var/cache/apt/archives/ folder.
That way the programs are already downloaded, saving you time and bandwidth - unless there is a newer version, in which case, the newer version will be downloaded and installed.

You can copy the hidden files and folders related to the programs you want, also.

Not always true - if you use bleachbit or use apt-get clean all your deb files will be removed