Trying another distro: app data can remain in home?

English Applications
1

Hi,

I have oSuse 11.2 now, yet I’d like to try Mint 9 KDE. In home directory there is data of apps I have like Chrome, Thunderbird, Kopete, etc. If I format root for Mint, yet I keep home directory, those apps will be able to still run on the home data, when reinstalled in Mint?

Thankx

2

Most likely yes but I think You can never be sure about it.

3

Hi,

I wouldn’t do that. Some inconsistencies may arise. There is some diffrence between distros. Some apps may work correctly, but i am unsure about KDE. The best thing to do is save your config files for Chrome, thunderbird, kopete, your docuemnts elsewhere and format the /home partition.

4

In those circumstances, I normally create a directory “old”. Then I move most of the config there
mv .??* old #should move most of them.
Then, after installing the new distro, I try selectively moving them back. I would create a “new” and move the new config there before moving the old config back. That allows testing and reversing.

You probably won’t have difficulty with thunderbird, chrome, etc. But you might have problems with software that is more thoroughly integrated into the distro.

5

First, it doesn’t hurt to backup those files first.
Then:

  • No problem with ~/.mozilla and ~/.mozilla-thunderbird. The config files should be updated if the version are different. However in case of Firefox, plugin paths might be different and so plugins will be missing.
  • No problem with ~/.config/chromium, except that the directory can have another name on other distros, using a different chrome version. It is ~/.config/chromium on Ubuntu and Mandriva, but ~/.config/google-chrome on Fedora.
  • ~/.kde4 might not even exist under Mint, as it probably uses ~/.kde (even for version 4) like Ubuntu. However, in doubt, renaming that directory in ~/.kde4.orig wouldn’t hurt. You can copy you Kopete stuff later (among other things) in your ~/.kde/share/apps. No problem and if any, they aren’t fatal and easily reversible.
  • I wouldn’t reformat /home because of that.