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Re: [LUG] move user data and settings to new hard disk

 

On Mon, 14 Jun 2010, Roland Tarver wrote:

On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 9:55 PM, Simon Waters <simon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

<snip>

The first complication is keeping UIDs and GIDs in sync, which isn't
that hard if you only have one or two users.

The second is that many apps aren't downwardly compatible, so if one
distro uses Firefox 3.5 and one 3.1, and you update your firefox
settings, it may not even start in another.

But I'd have thought try out the distro, see if it is any good, before
you start shuffling the fiddly things like mail config, browser settings
etc, into the distro.

90+% of what you need to know about a distro is found out in installing
it, and checking what applications they bundle. Of course if what you
find out by installing the distro is that the installer ate your data
partition you might not be a very happy bunny.

Me I just install new distros I'm interested in on an old computer and
give it a bash for a few hours, given people give away better computers
than the one I've used for this for years this doesn't have to be a
luxury activity.

Thanks for the advice. My plan sounds like an un-necessary hassle,
lol! I will do as you do and get an old computer for the task. Just
need to get through all the uni work and then I _really_ want to give
Debian a spin......

Although I use and advocate Debian myself, I'm not sure why you'd want to try Debian - you might find it a bit "old" compared to Unubtu and some others.

However, once you get sorted out, what I might suggest is having one disk for data (ie. /home) and use the other to test out distributions - you ought to be able to create many different distros this way, all bootable with the flick of a lilo (or grub) prompt.

Gordon


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