Nearly all my computers run Debian 13 but my wife's Thinkpad is still
running xubuntu 24.04.
I think the xubuntu installation on her laptop could do with a
thorough clean out, it hasn't had a clean installation from scratch
for many years. Currently the Firefox and Thunderbird snap
installations seem to be causing problems.
So I'm thinking that, if I'm going to do a clean install, I may as
well install Debian 13.
Her laptop is used nearly wholly for E-Mail and web browsing, nothing
very techie at all.
Am I likely to hit any big snags? Obviously I will back things up
carefully (we have daily incremental backups of /home and /etc
anyway). Do I need to do much more than make an image of /home and
then install Debian 13 and then copy /home onto the new install?
Am I likely to hit any big snags? Obviously I will back things up
carefully (we have daily incremental backups of /home and /etc
anyway). Do I need to do much more than make an image of /home and
then install Debian 13 and then copy /home onto the new install?
On Sat, 7 Mar 2026 09:35:41 +0000
Chris Green <cl@isbd.net> wrote:
Am I likely to hit any big snags? Obviously I will back things up carefully (we have daily incremental backups of /home and /etc
anyway). Do I need to do much more than make an image of /home and
then install Debian 13 and then copy /home onto the new install?
One specific point: /home contains a lot of the users' configuration
data, some of which may not be compatible with different versions of
the applications. I would not just drop the old dotfiles into the new
/home without testing before and after each application for functioning correctly, or if the files are short text files, examining them. In some cases, as you say the installation is old, you may want to configure
from scratch anyway.
Obviously the data should be safe enough to transfer.
Ideally, either broken/incompatible data or configuration files should
not cause an application any difficulty, they should just be reported,
but some applications don't handle invalid input files gracefully.
Le 07/03/2026 … 10:35, Chris Green a ‚critÿ:
Nearly all my computers run Debian 13 but my wife's Thinkpad is still running xubuntu 24.04.
I think the xubuntu installation on her laptop could do with a
thorough clean out, it hasn't had a clean installation from scratch
for many years. Currently the Firefox and Thunderbird snap
installations seem to be causing problems.
So I'm thinking that, if I'm going to do a clean install, I may as
well install Debian 13.
Her laptop is used nearly wholly for E-Mail and web browsing, nothing
very techie at all.
Am I likely to hit any big snags? Obviously I will back things up carefully (we have daily incremental backups of /home and /etc
anyway). Do I need to do much more than make an image of /home and
then install Debian 13 and then copy /home onto the new install?
Hello Chris,
First of all, in case there is a doubt here, I think there is only one
safe way to go from Ubuntu to Debian: a clean install. Any kind of
upgrade from Ubuntu from Debian should bring problems.
Apparently Ubuntu 24.4 linux kernel is version 6.8 while Debian 13
Trixie is 6.12 so if your wife's laptop works with Ubuntu 24.4 it should work with Trixie.
There would be probably no big problem switching from Ubuntu to Debian.
But potentially you would have to assert how to handle personal
application data: Ubuntu apps are often provided as snap packages and I think(1) that you could have to somehow restore the data to the relevant Debian packaged apps. Or you could chose to keep on using snaps on
Debian, that is possible but it is not the default.
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