Replacing LM 17.3 with LMDE 2

[dEhiN]

How different are LM 17.3 "Rosa" and LMDE 2 "Betsy"? I have 17.3 installed with (I think) MATE, although I've installed several DEs, including Cinnamon and KDE. Been using it since June of last year (started with 17.2). At the time I wanted to try LMDE because years ago when I was into Linux and dual-boots and such, my Linux go-to distro was always Debian. I decided to go with LM on a friend's suggestion since I hadn't used LInux in 5-10 years. And in the same vein of thought, I also decided to stick to LM over LMDE.

But now that I've gotten comfortable with Linux again, I want to try LMDE. Is it possible to replace LM with LMDE without much issues? I would rather avoid a complete fresh install as my /home partition is set up the way I like it and I have several programs installed, again to my liking. My partition table is like this:

/dev/sda1 - swap
/dev/sda2 - / - 14G (71% used)
/dev/sda5 - /home - 131G (43% used)

Here is a more detailed setup according to sfdisk:

Device Boot Start End MiB #blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 2862 2862 2930688 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2 * 2863 17169 14307 14650368 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 17170+ 152626 135457- 138706945 5 Extended
/dev/sda4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/sda5 17171 152626 135456 138706944 83 Linux

I do have a ext hd with plenty of space. If I have to do a fresh install (because the base of LM and LMDE are too different), I can copy stuff over to my ext hd. Apart from /home, what else should I copy?

Thank you so much in advance for any help you can give me.

[Crewp]

Because you seem a little unsure, I would suggest you download LMDE ISO and run it from there to see if you like it. My wife runs, 17.3 Cinnamon, and I run LMDE2, and they function pretty much the same on the surface. I do not know of a way to install it without a fresh install, so you could dual boot for a while also. You said you used Debian in the past, so you know PPA's are out, on LMDE, but if you don't tweak a lot, or experiment you wont see big difference in functionality.

[Cosmo.]

Most easy way to test it is VirtualBox. Install it and create a virtual machine for lmde2.

[dEhiN]

Because you seem a little unsure, I would suggest you download LMDE ISO and run it from there to see if you like it....You said you used Debian in the past, so you know PPA's are out, on LMDE, but if you don't tweak a lot, or experiment you wont see big difference in functionality.

Thank you for the suggestion. Yeah, I'm comfortable to a degree with Linux but perhaps more on the advanced-beginner stage. So I don't do any significant tweaking.

Most easy way to test it is VirtualBox. Install it and create a virtual machine for lmde2.

My laptop only has 2 GB of ram, so would an LMDE VM work with 1GB of ram?

The other thing I'm now thinking is to take a second laptop and put on LMDE on it. If I go that route, how would I go about determining what programs I have installed on my LM setup? I know I can pretty much just copy /home over to the new laptop (after I've installed LMDE).

[Cosmo.]

My laptop only has 2 GB of ram, so would an LMDE VM work with 1GB of ram?

Yes, probably a little bit slow. Also there should be no memory-intensive programs open on the host.

[dEhiN]

My laptop only has 2 GB of ram, so would an LMDE VM work with 1GB of ram?

Yes, probably a little bit slow. Also there should be no memory-intensive programs open on the host.

Sounds good. Thanks again!

[killer de bug]

I know I can pretty much just copy /home over to the new laptop (after I've installed LMDE).

I would avoid doing this. Copy your personal folders but not the config folders. Unless you know exactly what you are doing. You may not need all the config folders, some may be for a different version than the softwares you will use... It would be cleaner to avoid a huge copy-pasting.


You may find more difficult to configure some specific hardware under LMDE compared to LM17.x. Especially NVIDIA cards. It's not rocket sciences but there is no driver manager in LMDE.

[dEhiN]

I know I can pretty much just copy /home over to the new laptop (after I've installed LMDE).

I would avoid doing this. Copy your personal folders but not the config folders. Unless you know exactly what you are doing. You may not need all the config folders, some may be for a different version than the softwares you will use... It would be cleaner to avoid a huge copy-pasting.

Thanks for the tip. To be honest, I don't like new installs or reinstalls (though I do like trying new Linux distros!) so I always want to find a way to set up the new distro exactly like my existing one(s). I might just have to accept that each install is starting again, and as you said only copy my personal folders/files.

You may find more difficult to configure some specific hardware under LMDE compared to LM17.x. Especially NVIDIA cards. It's not rocket sciences but there is no driver manager in LMDE.

Haha, and the second laptop I was planning to test this on (if I don't do the VM option) is an HP Pavilion dv9000, which is essentially meant for media. Oh well, I doubt I'll miss all those extra media hotkeys anyway.

I know this second laptop has an AMD Turion x2; I forget the vid card on it, and can't check now. But I'm going to assume it's RADEON since iirc, AMD switched to using RADEON cards before the Turion line came out.

[killer de bug]

Oh well, I doubt I'll miss all those extra media hotkeys anyway.

Media keys are working perfectly for me. Out of the box support with the 3.x kernel series.

[dEhiN]

Oh well, I doubt I'll miss all those extra media hotkeys anyway.

Media keys are working perfectly for me. Out of the box support with the 3.x kernel series.

Beautiful! Then I'm going to keep the LM install on laptop #1 and put LMDE on laptop #2. Thanks to Crewp, Cosmo., and killer de bug for all your help.