The easiest way to ReInstall and Keep settings and drivers

[garda]

There is a write up called 'How to Backup Your Stuff UNIX-Style' in the Tutorials / Howtos section of the forums, in which your question is addressed -- have look at section 3 of the aforementioned tutorial (Step 3: Package Selections).

[Fred]

kasperbs,

I don't want to speak out of turn here but is there a reason you want to use the 64 bit version? Are you doing something that can really benefit from the 64 bit version? Do you have 4 Gig. or more of RAM installed? If the answer to the last question is "no" then you may actually be hurting yourself, performance wise. Also keep in mind that the 64 bit version has not been time tested. It is highly unlikely that it will be as stable and solid as the 32 bit versions. That goes for the 64 bit programs you will need to run on it to get the benefit of a 64 bit system also.

Just a thought.

Fred

[garda]

The question is whether you will need that 4GB RAM in Linux, which is very unlikely unless you run mission-critical high-load services on your desktop or run some sort of multi-environment virtualization. I believe you bought or built that machine with gaming in mind, which is of course a Windows job. And no, you will not gain noticeable improvement in performance over 32-bit if you only use your computer for typical taks .

[locutus]

As garda alluded to in 2nd post of this thread, this command will give you a file (text file) of all your currently installed programs:

sudo dpkg --get-selections > packagelist.txt

[Fred]

kasperbs,

Another thing to keep in mind about 64 bit systems is that they use 20 - 30% more RAM than a similar 32 bit system for the same workload. Since you only have 4 Gig., if you do get into the situation where you are going into swap with the 64 bit and you wouldn't be with the 32 bit you have really shot yourself in the foot, so-to-speak.

On a 32 bit system you can only use between 3.2 and 3.5 Gig of RAM without the PAE kernel patches. The rest is not usable by the system. This is somewhat wasteful, but, there is another side of this issue too. You will not ever go into swap, so anything that runs on that 32 bit 4 Gig system will always run totally in RAM, or not at all. Swap is unusable in this situation.

As with everything else in life, a coin has two sides. But if you look closely enough you might even find another side too.

Fred

[garda]

Sorry, I have never attempted to switch between different Mint variants of the same Edition so I can not give you a precise answer. But I believe you should be able to retain most of them if you backup your home partition and those DEB packages in /var/cache/apt/archives.