mint 17.3 to mint 18.3 with separate home and boot partitions

[rofull]

I have Mint 17.3 installed on 50 GB / partition and Home/ is separate partition. I want to put mint 18.3 on the / partition and not format or change the Home/ partition so I can keep the apps I have installed. Is this possible or feasible? There is also a 16GB swap partition.

[catweazel]

I have Mint 17.3 installed on 50 GB / partition and Home/ is separate partition. I want to put mint 18.3 on the / partition and not format or change the Home/ partition so I can keep the apps I have installed. Is this possible or feasible? There is also a 16GB swap partition.

Yes, it's possible. Simply install Mint to the / partition but only mount /home during the installation process. You can leave the swap partition alone as the installer will find it an use it. That said, backup your /home partition before proceeding.

[rofull]

Thank you Catweasel for your response and help. Mount /Home but not allow to format /Home as opposed to "do not use this partition"?

[Sir Charles]

Mount /Home but not allow to format /Home as opposed to "do not use this partition"?

Correct!

I want to put mint 18.3 on the / partition and not format or change the Home/ partition so I can keep the apps I have installed. Is this possible or feasible?

If I am not mistaken, the /home contains, apart from your personal files, only the configurations and settings for the installed apps and not the apps themselves which are installed in /. You would need to install them once again after the fresh install of the OS.

[Mattyboy]

Mount /Home but not allow to format /Home as opposed to "do not use this partition"?

Correct!

I want to put mint 18.3 on the / partition and not format or change the Home/ partition so I can keep the apps I have installed. Is this possible or feasible?

If I am not mistaken, the /home contains, apart from your personal files, only the configurations and settings for the installed apps and not the apps themselves which are installed in /. You would need to install them once again after the fresh install of the OS.

Aye, that's right.

You could use the backup tool , I think it works moving up a distro, to then re-add and it'll download those apps again.

Note the

Code: Select all

dpkg get-selections > mylist.list

option.

Not so sure about all your apt apt-get options though.

[all41]

so I can keep the apps I have installed

Have a look at Aptic for transferring the apps to your new os install.
It's in the repositories.