Noob question - I use Linux Mint and have for a year or so. People often have comments about switching distros like it’s super easy to do.
If I wanted to do that, how hard is it? I’ve not really had any problems with Mint… but mainly want to know in case I want to try a new distribution one day.
If your current distro works, there’s no reason to switch. Switching means a fresh install, repeat whatever customization you want or need, restore your backup. It’s not difficult, but can be time-consuming until you have everything configured they way you want it.
It depends. I’d say it’s a scale of fairly easy to very easy depending on how you have everything set up and documented. Essentially, back everything up and install the new distro then put it all back. It will take some time, though. The first time I distro-hopped, I forgot to take a list of my installed packages, which made for some unwelcome surprises when I couldn’t find certain programs. That’s not hard to overcome, just keep a list of your installed packages. Even if you don’t, it’s easy to just reinstall them.
It’s easy or hard depending on how you did your previous installation and how much are you willing to learn.
Having / and /home in diferent partitions helps a lot but then one has to think about keeping or changing the DE of choice, keeping or changing bash, zsh, fish, etc. Some adaptation is required.
It completely depends what you use your computer for.
For example, do you game? DRM free or no, and where are they installed? On a seperate drive?
What about work stuff? Media? The larger question I’m getting at is “how much of what you do is portable, and easy to just plop on a USB stick, reinstall from the internet, or just leave on a second drive already in your desktop?”
Noob question - I use Linux Mint and have for a year or so. People often have comments about switching distros like it’s super easy to do.
If I wanted to do that, how hard is it? I’ve not really had any problems with Mint… but mainly want to know in case I want to try a new distribution one day.
If your current distro works, there’s no reason to switch. Switching means a fresh install, repeat whatever customization you want or need, restore your backup. It’s not difficult, but can be time-consuming until you have everything configured they way you want it.
It depends. I’d say it’s a scale of fairly easy to very easy depending on how you have everything set up and documented. Essentially, back everything up and install the new distro then put it all back. It will take some time, though. The first time I distro-hopped, I forgot to take a list of my installed packages, which made for some unwelcome surprises when I couldn’t find certain programs. That’s not hard to overcome, just keep a list of your installed packages. Even if you don’t, it’s easy to just reinstall them.
It’s easy or hard depending on how you did your previous installation and how much are you willing to learn.
Having / and /home in diferent partitions helps a lot but then one has to think about keeping or changing the DE of choice, keeping or changing bash, zsh, fish, etc. Some adaptation is required.
It completely depends what you use your computer for.
For example, do you game? DRM free or no, and where are they installed? On a seperate drive?
What about work stuff? Media? The larger question I’m getting at is “how much of what you do is portable, and easy to just plop on a USB stick, reinstall from the internet, or just leave on a second drive already in your desktop?”