[plug] mandrake to debian

[Cameron Patrick]

lanes at iinet.net.au wrote:

| Normally i would just format and start from scratch but i am now
| getting into this whole linux on the desktop thing and having
| configuration files for my apps (xchat, customised enviroment, etc)
| home dirs and such. Can i simply copy across my . files from the
| home dirs or what would people suggest in a painless as possible
| transition.
[...]
| I currently have the normal swap boot root and home partitions.

Having a separate home partition makes this relatively simple - just
make sure you don't wipe it when you install Debian!  The woody
installer is pretty good about asking for confirmation before it does
anything like that.  Not that you'd want to use woody for anything.
The new installer for sarge (creatively named "debian-installer")
didn't give you much warning last time I tried it (!) but the
partitioner's been rewritten since then so everything may be
different.

I would first make a backup copy of your home dir (cp -a /home/cameron
/home/cameron.backup) and then try using it directly under Debian.
You'll just have to make sure that your user id is the same, which it
probably will be.  (You can use the 'id' command to see your user id.
The first user that you create under Debian will get uid 1000...
Otherwise you'll have to use chown to change the ownership of your
home directory.)

It's possible that Debian won't like some of your configuration files
due to different versions of software, differently patched software,
things being set up slightly differently and so on.  In that case you
might want to get rid of all your dot files after making that backup
copy, and then gradually copy things back from your old home
directory and test them.

Cameron.