Moving from Mint 20.1 to LMDE 4

[certfiedblues]

Good afternoon:

I cannot determine whether the answer for this exists or not, but I have searched and come up wanting. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I have been a Linux Mint user for many years, but I have not really been happy with following along with Ubuntu. I'm on a live LMDE 4 install now, and I would like to convert over my existing Windows 10/Linux Mint to Win 10/LMDE, but I'm nervous about migrating settings and I'm ignorant enough to delay pulling the trigger until I know a little more.

What I've read seems to be to set up TimeShift, make a backup, wipe, partition/install, and then restore settings. However, as I'm creating a backup from an essentially different distro, will this work? Are there any things to be aware of?

Thank you for your time.

Stephen

[Aztaroth]

Hi
As you put it out

I'm creating a backup from an essentially different distro, will this work?

and unless God strikes his hand over your computer, this is not supposed to work.
Timeshift, if correctly setup, will just allow you to rebuild your actual Mint version (unless you change your partitions in a way that the restoration will be impossible because of lack of space).
But what you really should care is your own documents : backup both types (Mint's and W10). Losing an OS may cost you a day or two to reinstall, losing some personal files may cost you months or years or even unvaluable.
PS : don't see my remarks as dreadful.Just be careful. It's only plain security.

[JoeFootball]

Are there any things to be aware of?

As another option for your consideration, just make LMDE a third OS on your system. This way you can maintain your 20.1 deployment until you get LMDE running the way you like it, and then decommission 20.1 at that time.

[Moonstone Man]

Are there any things to be aware of?

Yes. In three words or less, it won't work.

Scrap the timeshift idea, backup your important files and install LMDE4 over the top of the existing LM using manual partitioning. There is absolutely no guarantee that your settings will migrate or not cause major issues in LMDE4.

[kc1di]

I would say that the timeshift thing will not work. You'll have to do a fresh install of LMDE4 There are way too many differences to make a conversion possible.
Good luck and back up important stuff to USB or cloud.

[axisofevil]

Best to have a separate /home partition.
You should be able to install, in effect wiping / and keeping /home

Make sure that you allocate users in the same order as they were created in Mint - otherwise you will need to edit /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow.
This will keep UID/GID associations with user names.
You will lose the contents of /var such as logs, email, crontabs etc.

You will also be using an older kernel - 4.19.0.

[self-heal]

I went from Windows to LMDE. I want to caution you that you should keep a copy of your whole home directory. If you have an interesting setup, like if you have made special copies to the /etc directory back those up too. Your home directory will contain a heap of dot-flies. Back up your browser saved passwords (if you use that). Back up your browser's bookmarks. If you use your own history, backup that too.When you install, you probably wont need any of them. When I say backup use the browser's export facility. Backing up its dot files may not work!

You're emails. Back up emails. Probably best to export them somehow. If you use email on the web or you don't keep emails, this doesn't apply to you.

Did you create any databases that gets stored outside of /home?

The dot-files are not the first thing to use when restoring. Exported files will be more portable between distinct versions of Linxu or distinct OSes.