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  • =?UTF-8?B?4oCcMw==?= ways to switch Linux distros without losing all your =?UTF-8?B?ZGF0YeKAnQ==?=

    From Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?=@ldo@nz.invalid to comp.os.linux.misc on Wed Feb 18 22:15:21 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc

    Jack Wallen offers some tips for prospective distro-hoppers: <https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-switch-linux-distros-and-retain-all-of-your-data/>.

    His first tip is to use the rCLmanualrCY installation option to put your
    /home on a separate disk. You can also put it on a separate partition
    of the same disk. WhatrCOs the point of this? Well, at partitioning
    time, you can allocate, not one, but *two* OS partitions. Use only one
    of them for this installation, but leave the other one available for a
    future alternative OS installation. You can point this at the exact
    same /home partition you have already created with the first install,
    and have access to all your existing user files that way.

    He also mentions symlinking your user Documents directory from another
    disk. You could also just point that additional disk directly in your
    Documents directory. Symlinking can lead to some fiddliness with
    bulk-copying files, backup/restore etc, which is why I find direct
    mounting to be less troublesome.
    --- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?=@ldo@nz.invalid to comp.os.linux.misc on Fri Feb 20 23:34:06 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc

    On 20 Feb 2026 20:32:44 GMT, St|-phane CARPENTIER wrote:

    Which means he consider one doesn't have backup. So the first tip
    should be to have backups before considering anything else.

    Speaking of backups, you know as well as I do that they are far too
    commonly neglected. Every time a discussion about doing them comes up
    in some of these newsgroups, I get the feeling that the very concept
    itself seems to be poorly understood by some. Too often, the
    suggestion is made that you must make rCLimagerCY backups, which require special tools and are cumbersome to restore, instead of just doing
    regular file copies which can be managed with standard Linux
    file-manipulation tools.

    I think these misconceptions could be coming from Windows users (or
    ex-Windows users) who are too accustomed to Windows ways of doing
    things ...
    --- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2