Ubuntu – Installing MATE desktop environment without installing the applications

This article on Web upd8 says that Deepin is using a patched version of Compiz. So most likely it's not compatible with Unity (which also depends on Compiz).

You can still make a dual-boot if you like to use both DE's.

Assuming that the development environment is somewhere in your home directory, here is what I would try. Please note, I haven't tried this myself so this comes with absolutely no warranty. In short, I would install Ubuntu with MATE in another partition, then install any packages that you have installed in Mint, and reuse your current home directory in the new system.

More in detail:

1. in your current system, get the list of installed packages in a form usable by dpkg --set-selections:

   apt-mark showmanual | sed -e 's/$/ install/' > pkgs.txt
   

   (this gets you only the list of packages that you manually installed; I believe that this should be good enough, or you can get the list of every installed package with dpkg --get-selections '*' > pkgs.txt).

2. Install Ubuntu on a new partition.

3. Install MATE:

   sudo apt-get install mate-core
   

   for a minimal MATE desktop or

   sudo apt-get install mate-desktop-environment
   

   for the complete MATE desktop.

4. Reuse your home from Mint. You can do this by just copying it all over, or (with a minimal risk of having it somehow altered by the new system) mount it directly into the new system by editing the /etc/fstab in Ubuntu and adding this lines:

   /dev/disk/by-uuid/<uuid-of-mint-part> /mnt/mint auto nosuid,nodev,nofail,user,exec 0 0
   /mnt/mint/home/<user>   /home/<user> none bind
   

   where you can use the blkid /dev/<mint-partition> command to find out should find out the UUID of the mint partition. Also remember to create the /mnt/mint directory because I believe that it must exist in order for the mount to succeed.

5. Reboot (into Ubuntu again); when the system comes up, your home directory should be the one you have in Mint.

6. Install the extra packages you had installed in Mint: copy the pkgs.txt file you created in step 1 into the new system, and from there issue the commands:

   sudo dpkg --set-selections < selection.txt
   sudo apt-get -u dselect-upgrade
   

If everything works out as expected, and you used the "bind mount" trick for your home, you could move it for good into the new location, and then delete your Mint partition.