Ubuntu – How to upgrade from x86 to x64 without losing settings

32-bit64-bitsystem-installation

Is there an easy way to upgrade the system to x64 from x86 without losing settings and having to repartition etc?

Best Answer

You can just perform an x86-64 install over the top of your existing i386 install. There's no need to reformat or repartition - the Ubuntu installer has supported keeping the contents of /home and (most of) /etc (and other data directories) for a couple of releases now.

That will get you most of the way there; you'll keep all your configuration, but you won't have the same software installed.

To do that, the guide from this answer should work:

  1. Before installing the x86-64 version, dump a list of your currently installed packages by running dpkg --get-selections > ~/installed-software in a terminal.
  2. After installing, restore the list of installed packages by running sudo dpkg --set-selections < ~/installed-software followed by sudo apt-get -f install. There will probably be some packages that can't be installed, as there are some i386 packages without x86-64 counterparts - libc6-686, the 686-optimised libc is the common example.
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