How do you save the configuration files of certain application like
for instance Thunderbird, Firefox?
To backup your apps data, you need to look in your Personal Folder for the .(hidden, press CONTROL + H to see them) folders. For example, Firefox (and other Mozilla apps) saves your personal data in a folder named .mozilla. Thunderbird does it using a folder named .thunderbird.
Others, Google Chrome/Chromium for example, use the .config folder, having a sub-folder there. (ex, .config/google-chrome)
To backup this settings, just copy the desired folders, just remember where they were before pasting them back.
When you copy an app folder, you copy ALL its preferences, history, databases, etc, so your bookmarks, extensions and other personal data are saved.
I have some applications like MATLAB and Maple (Based on JAVA) installed.
When I migrate, can I just copy the entire installation folder to the
new version of Ubuntu?
Yes, you can do that, but only with applications that were fully installed in that directory. Some apps install the main app in your home directory, but some libraries, or multimedia files (such as icons) in other folders. Be careful with this, the best is to reinstall, but you can use them.
*you should also check the compatibility, but they should work file
When doing a backup which folders should be backed up?
The most important folder is /etc, mostly because you may have modified a few files, like the Samba configuration, the SSH server configuration, the hosts file, and some other configuration that you may also have changed without knowing and would be better to keep rather than go back to the defaults ones (like the updates preferences, etc)
Other folders depends on what you have installed and/or modified (eg, XAMPP is installed on the /opt directory, and the configuration files reside in its own folder)
I have BURG installed. How can I do a backup of it?
I'm not exactly sure, i guess you can just backup the installed themes (if any). Reinstall in the new Ubuntu installation and restore. But again, it depends on what you have modified.
When I perform the clean install of ubuntu, would GRUB (bootloader)
be removed and in anyway jeopardize my windows installation?
No, GRUB is never removed, it may be upgraded, but this wont affect at all you Windows installation. Besides, remember you have BURG, which modifies GRUB's behavior
How do I make a backup of all my PPA and would they be compatible to the newer
version of ubuntu when I restore them?
The only way I know to do this is to manually backup all your .list located at /etc/apt
You should copy the sources.list and all the files located at /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
I hope to have answered all your questions. ;)
Best Answer
deb/dkpgpackages require root to be installed. This is as much to protect the machine and its other users from harm as it is to protect the software from the users. (that made sense in my head!) This is technically the case becuase the whole apt/dpkg database is owned by root.Sidebar: These days you can install and update things without root because of a permissions framework called PolicyKit that is similar to sudo/sudoers for graphical interfaces.
But there's no reason you can't have a local repository in another format. Desura (a Steam-a-like) manages your game installations. Eclipse can manage its own plugins and update them. Firefox for plugins. They're all repositories in their own way.
You don't have to install most software. If you can download it, most can be extracted, compiled (if it needs it) and run. You don't have to jump through the packaging steps.
Plenty of games come in
.runinstallers. If you run these as root, it'll install the game into/opt/or/usr/local/games/, etc but otherwise it'll install into your home directory.As for your third question, no. It can only modify what the user can modify. And the same goes for a root-installed Java (or other) application. Unless it runs through a crazy setuid process, it can only access what the user can access. Just because the executable may is owned by root, doesn't mean it runs as root.