Install Ubuntu Mate, reuse /home

Support & Help Requests
#1

Hello there!

I have another distro installed at this time. I actually have 2 drives in the laptop…one being a 1tb SSD that is my /home.
I would like to install Mint Mate and retain my /home.

If I could just make a new user directory and then hopefully copy the contents out of the old user directory. Would this work…what would I need to do to be successful?

Note: I don’t have an external drive I can move things to for now…so My hopes are install OS on one drive, keep original home drive as home so I can copy content to new user folder…then delete old user…

whatcha all think…am I loco?

#2

If you use the same user name and set the /home drive to be used you don’t have to do any copying or anything. The only issue would be changing from one DE/WM to a different one if you have any configuration files.

#3

The best bet here is to create a new partition (assuming you have enough disk space) and copy your files to that and then do a complete fresh full installation, as pointed out, you may well have a problem with the new DE/WM files if you are switching from one distro to another!.

Resize your current home partition if space allows (making sure you have enough space left to move!) and format the new partition to FAT32 if you are going to use the new partition under Windblows!.
Once done, install using your original root and home partitions for your new OS and copy the files back from your reserve partition should you want to!. :smiley:

#4

Forgot to mention this method of saving your data!: