Hi,
I have Mandriva 10.1 installed on my PC, but I want to switch to
Ubuntu.
Will it be possible for me to keep the /home partition intact and
replace the Mandriva installation with Ubuntu? I hope the question is
not like asking I want to reinstall windows but don't want to touch C:
drive. :-). /home is on another partition.
Thanks,
Deepesh

deepesh.g@gmail.com wrote:

> Hi,
> I have Mandriva 10.1 installed on my PC, but I want to switch to
> Ubuntu.
> Will it be possible for me to keep the /home partition intact and
> replace the Mandriva installation with Ubuntu? I hope the question is
> not like asking I want to reinstall windows but don't want to touch C:
> drive. :-). /home is on another partition.
> Thanks,
> Deepesh

It should be possible. Some things you will need to look out for:
- Versions of the desktop environments. Since KDE and GNOME store their
settings in the users $HOME, you want to make sure the Ubuntu versions of
GNOME &/or KDE are >= the Mandriva versions.
- Application versions. Any application software that you are installing
which has settings stored somewhere in $HOME (firefox, thunderbird, other
apps)should be >= to the current versions of the software currently being
used.
- User ID numbers. You'll want to make sure each user has the same user ID
number on the Ubuntu install as they have on the Mandriva install. For
root, this shouldn't be a problem, but for any ordinary user it might be.

So it should certainly possible, but will also require planning and work on
your part.

You'd probably be served by also asking on an Ubuntu-specific forum in case
someone there has done what you plan to do.

Good luck,
Tim

--
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"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts" John Wooden

Thanks a lot for your answer. Gave me enough courage to go ahead and do
it :-), now that I know what to look for.
Thanks,
Deepesh

Just for information.
Well I tried it and it works. I think it was good to have /home on
another filesystem, as the installation required to format root
partition (/). I could keep my /home intact and install Kubuntu over
Mandriva. Adapt worked great to install whatever I required. Firefox
took a while and would not start at first. Later I realized it requires
a missing library libstdc++5
(https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FirefoxNewVersion). Still trying to find
suitable driver for my Nvidia card (pretty old TNT2/RIVA). Otherwise I
am happy to switch and would stick with Kubuntu for now.
Deepesh

In other words, KUbuntu didn't install a pretty basic program (AKA most
popular browser in Linux) correctly and you don't have a driver that
would come with a Mandriva Power Pack ready to run. And in exchange
you got what?????