Can I preserve /home installing LL over another XFCE distro (Manjaro)?

[n1ksn]

I'm very happy with LL 2.6 on my notebook computer.  I'm thinking of installing LL on my Dell Latitude D6410 which currently dual boots with Win 7 and Manjaro.  My Manjaro install has separate partitions for / and /home and uses the xfce desktop but a more recent kernal than LL.

If I install LL over Manjaro I'm thinking of formating the root partition, but not /home.  This would preserve my work data, music files, and application program configuration files (mostly hidden), but there is a potential confilict with hidden system and desktop configuration files.  I'd much rather take this approach and then tidy up any resulting weirdness on the desktop, but I don't want to screw up critical system functions, either.  (And if there are a few stray config files lying about that are harmless, I can live with it.)

I know a totally clean install is the safest, but I wonder how risky my plan is.  Thanks for any insight or advice you might have.

Cheers,
Andy N1KSN

[torreydale]

This all comes down to what is being used as the bootloader for your dual boot setup.  If you have separate hard drives for Win7 and Linux, and you're using your BIOS to select which drive to boot from, then what you're asking should work fine.  If they're on the same hard drive, proceed with a little caution.  I would have backups of your /home partition and Win7 just in case. 

[gold_finger]

@n1ksn,


Since both distros use Xfce you'll most likely be fine with configs in current home not causing problems in LL.  If you want to reduce potential problems, just go through current home's config files from the live LL dvd/usb right before you install it and delete all but the ones you know you want to keep.  (Don't do that until you're actually going to install LL; otherwise you'll just break your Manjaro system.)  Or, you can just leave it as is and deal with any minor issues as they arise (if any do at all).  Eg.  If something doesn't behave right, just close it, delete it's config file and restart the program.  That will then generate a new "default" config file for it and you can proceed from there.


Re: booting as brought up by torredale -- if you're using something like EasyBCD in Windows to boot Manjaro and want to continue using that, then direct LL's boot loader installation to it's Root partition instead of the MBR of the drive.  If Manjaro's grub was in charge of booting both Windows and Linux, then just do same in LL -- install grub boot loader to "/dev/sda" (the MBR of the drive -- no partition number after the "sda").


In a nutshell, you've got the right idea on how to replace Manjaro:

• Use "Something else" install method
  
• Choose old Manjaro root as root for LL and check box to format it
  
• Choose old Manjaro home as home for LL and don't check format box (use same username that you did in Manjaro when you get to that step in installation so you don't run into ownership problems of the files in home)
  
• Assuming you have a swap partition, just leave it alone -- the installer will automatically use that on its own.
  
• "Device for boot loader installation" = the mbr, "/dev/sda" (assuming "a" is the letter corresponding to the boot hard drive) if you want LL to handle booting; or LL's root partition if you want Windows to handle booting.  (Note:  If Windows is not currently handling booting, don't try switching to have it control booting while installing LL.  That won't work because its code in the mbr got wiped by Manjaro.  Just install LL's boot loader to the MBR of drive.  Or, if you really want Windows in control, you can restore Windows code to the mbr first, then install LL and direct it's boot loader to it's root partition.)
  

[n1ksn]

Thank you so much for the help.  I had tried this on another computer before with other distros (both with xfce) and only had minor tweeks (mainly font dpi) to make afterward, but I thought I'd better ask those who are familiar with LL if it seems feasible.  If I go through with it I'll report back how it went.  Manjaro hasn't broken yet from a rolling update, so I'm still weighing whether to pull the trigger or not. 

When I first moved over to Linux as my primary OS (with Linux Mint MATE on our desktop) I used the installer option to install next to Windows (Vista).  It has worked well, but in retrospect I wish I'd known the benefits of having /home in a separate partition.  I've seen that some installers have this as a option now in addition to "something else."  There's the question of how the available space would be split between / and /home, but some rules of thumb could be worked out, I'd think.  On the other hand, it's one more thing that could go wrong.

LL is zipping along on my notebook.  I took it along when I went to have my car serviced yesterday.  No problem at all identifying the customer wifi connection there. 

Thanks again,
Andy N1KSN

[gold_finger]

I'm not trying to complicate things and am not suggesting that the following is "better" than what you already have planned; but there is another option you may want to consider.

If you have enough extra space on the hard drive you could triple boot with Windows, Manjero and Linux Lite.  In that case you could also make a completely separate partition to hold common data files (Docs, Music, Pics, etc.) and have them accessible to all OS's.

If you're interested in doing that, here are some general pointers:

• Make a Win 7 recovery dvd/usb if you don't already have one.
  
• Make external backup copies of important data files on Windows and Manjero.
  
• Use GParted from live LL dvd/usb to shrink Manjero's home as much as possible; then make a data partition at end of the disk.  (If planning to share files between only Linuxes, use Ext4 formatting.  If plan to share with Windows too, format it as NTFS.)
  
• Boot into Manjero and move your data files from home to the data partition.  (Keep config files in home where they are.)  If run into permission problems trying to do that, just go ahead an follow tutorial referenced in last step to set-up use of the data partition in Manjero now instead of doing so after LL installation.
  
• Boot into Windows and move any files you want from there to the data partition.
  
• Boot again with live LL dvd/usb and open GParted again.
  
• With data files removed from Manjero's home, you can now shrink it down to 2-3GB (which will be more than enough to hold the config files and your "Desktop" folder assuming you kept that on home.)
  
• Adjust sizes of Manjero home and data partition to leave 20-25GB free space for LL.
  
• In free space, make LL root partition (approx 20GB) and small home partition (2-3GB) for config files if you think you'd like to have option to keep those upon upgrades/re-installations.
  
• Run installer and use "Something else" option to direct installation to those new LL partitions.
  
• For "Device for boot loader installation" -- make sure you pick mbr of drive (probably /dev/sda) and not LL's root partition.  (Only exception to that is if you're using EasyBCD from Windows for booting.)
  
• After install is done and you've rebooted into it, follow steps in this tutorial to have the data partition auto-mounted at startup and to symlink the data folders there to your home.  Same basic steps shown can be used in Manjero.
  

Additional note of caution:  If you feel need to shrink any Windows partitions to make room for any of the above, that is best done from within Windows disk manager or by using a Windows-based tool like MiniTool Partition Wizard.  (GParted can be used, but doing so from Windows is safer and less likely to cause file corruption problems.)

[n1ksn]

Thank you gold_finger for all the good info.  I very much appreciate you taking the time to lay things out.  I decided to replace Manjaro with LL.  Although I had a good working Manjaro install, I decided to switch because I want to install Microchip's IDE MPLAB X and the install scripts they provide are for Ubuntu derivatives (and maybe Debian).  (The IDE is available in the Arch AUR, but would require may to much work to install.)

So I installed LL / over the Manjaro / in the root parition with an ext4 format and did not format the /home partition.  It went pretty well with the largest visible changes to the desktop the font size, disappearance of the icons, and the replacement of the desktop background with the xfce4 default (I chose the "default" setup after install).  These were all easily fixed, but I got cold feet, worrying that there might be some lurking problem beneath the surface.  (There probably was not.)

So rebooted with the Live USB and deleted most of the system config files I could find in /home, leaving along those files that were obviously associated with application programs (Firefox, Guayadeque, Wine, etc.).  Then I did another install, just like the first one.  All seemed to go well (with the same changes as above).  I was puzzled for a while because the network signal indicator disappeared, but that was another easy fix in the panel configuration.  I then went on to make my post-installation tweeks and additions (tlp, thermald, swappiness=10, etc.) 

One big issue with the Dell Latitude E6410 and Linux distros is very high touchpad sensitivity.  This can't be addressed with the items in the Settings menu and requires copying /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/synaptics.conf as root and then (as root) adding the lines

Option "FingerHigh" "100"
Option "FingerLow" "85"

in the appropriate area in the file.  (I learned this when trying out AntiX, as their settings menu selection simply opens up the configuration file in a text editor!)  By the way, these values are specific for this model.  On my Gateway LT40 notebook they are more like 50 and 40, resp.  So if you try this, start with lower values and work your way up, or you might effectively make the touchpad unresponsive.

I had to reinstall my two Wine applicaton programs (LTSpice and Elsie) to restore their whisker menu entries, but the existing config files and libraries were unharmed by this.

Lastly, in converting from Manjaro to LL I lost some nice custom action entries in the Thunar right-click menu, like "Open as Administrator" which I use a lot.  Fortunately I had these available on another machine and just copied them.  If I'd stopped at the first install, I would not have had to do this.

In summary, I probably should have left the config files in /home alone, as it would have saved me some work, but it all came out OK.

So now I have Linux Lite 2.6 on two machines and think I've made a good decision in doing it.

Cheers,
Andy N1KSN