[SWLUG] Re: Ubuntu and USB WiFi

[Julian Hall]

Rhys Sage wrote:

>Has anybody any advice on changing Linux distros? I
>have Ubuntu installed. How do I replace Ubuntu with
>Xandros without losing my data?
>  
>
Hi Rhys,

1.  Backup first.
2.  Backup first.

In the words of Kryten, "I realise this is this is technically just one 
point, but it is a very important one and worth mentioning twice" :)

How are your mount points arranged?  For example I have /home on a 
separate physical partition.  So when I migrated to Xandros from 
Mandrake all I did was flatten the partition with Mandrake on it 
(actually I let Xandros do that) and then install Xandros onto it.

One thing which will help you with Xandros which I really liked.  If you 
do happen to have /home and /usr on the same partition as your distro, 
Xandros has the option to install itself while renaming your current 
directories to /oldhome and /oldusr.  Once your new distro is up and 
running you can then just copy across any data you need to retain to the 
new directories.  You'd probably need to do that as root at a guess.

*PLEASE NOTE:  I have *not* tried this, I just saw the option was 
available.  Please refer to steps 1 & 2 ;)*

Also you'll find if you have /home on a separate partition that X will 
probably not load at first, as I found out the hard way :)  X will think 
your /home belongs to a different user.  The command to fix that (in a 
shell of course) is:

# chown -R newusername:group /home/oldusername

That gives your new login ownership of the old /home folder.

HTH.

Kind regards,

Julian