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If you put /home on its own partition [1], reinstalling linux from scratch becomes really easy, better than dist-upgrade imho. Backup your packages [2], overwr

If you put /home on its own partition [1], reinstalling linux from scratch becomes really easy, better than dist-upgrade imho. Backup your packages [2], overwrite / with the CD/DVD/USB installer, tell the installer to use the existing /home as the new installation's /home, then reinstall your backed up packages [2]. Any software you don't get from the repositories, keep on /home (git repos, JVM, etc). This essentially makes the system files disposable, rewriteable, overwriteable, reinstallable at will, while all the custom config and personal data resides on /home. Keep /home backed up to multiple media. Makes upgrading to a new version relatively painless, and you get the benefit of a fresh install. 1. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-partplan/index.html http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-partplan/i... 2. http://askubuntu.com/a/81112/20362 http://askubuntu.com/a/81112/20362

yulaow 13y ago
I know perfectly that and infact i ever put /home in a different partition, as /boot and /var, but the big part of the config files are not in the /home but in /etc and i will lose all of them each time i have to reinstall from scratch. Dist-upgrade is one of the main advantage of a lot of distribution not rolling, and it has ever worked perfectly for me ( i remember having a ubuntu wm with 9.10 upgraded without problem since 12.04. After that i didn't need it more). Also thanks to that i have not to teach to my parents how to format and reinstall an os, they just need to press a button when the os itself warns them that there is a new version ready to download. It just that mint developers are more focused on make money spamming their ads everywhere rather that implement that basic feature.