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Re: Upgrading Linux Mint...

Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 4:33 pm
by dlkreations
It is possible to retain everything in /home if when you initially installed, you put it on a separate partition. If you chose to let Mint take over your entire drive by letting it automatically partition your drive then no, unless you back everything up on to an external drive/flash drive/extra internal drive.

Re: Upgrading Linux Mint...

Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 7:06 pm
by dlkreations
If you don't format your /home partition, then you should be ok. Everything in /home would stay intact, i.e. all your themes, icons, wallpapers etc. if they reside in your user based folders. If any of those new themes and such reside in your /usr/share/ they will be removed. Wine should be ok, but I can't say for sure since I very rarely use it myself.

But you should format your /, although I am unsure of your /boot, if you have a dual boot system running, but if not, then reformatting that won't hurt anything.

I wouldn't worry about being a pain, because you're not in the slightest. I actually enjoy helping others if I have the knowledge to do so.

Good luck.

Re: Upgrading Linux Mint...

Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 10:07 pm
by dlkreations
mainstone wrote:Well,

Thanks, it is very appreciated. I'm really impressed with Mint and the whole support. Makes getting into Linux (and more importantly, getting away from the anoyance of Windows) much easier!!!

So programs and such would still be installed on the new update?? Would the data files for thunderbird be stored in the /home partition?

Thanks Don.
Yes the data files are stored in /home by default unless otherwise changed by the user. Now more or less, it's basically user settings that are saved in your /home folder as well as Wine. Your programs are stored in /usr/ which is part of /, which has sub-folders where other programs are installed. Here is a good page that shows the hierarchy of the directory structure:
Short version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem ... y_Standard
Long version: http://tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Filesystem-Hierarchy/html/
PDF of long version: http://tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Filesystem-Hi ... rarchy.pdf

Hope some of this helps.