Ubuntu – Migrate from Ubuntu to Mint, easiest and most current suggestions

14.04backup

I am thinking about changing my Ubuntu to Mint, as I have heard that it is faster and a little more stable than Ubuntu(Running 14.04, and some issues happen with loading and closing apps). I'm finding guides here and there, but since tings change from version to version, I don't want to screw this up. I would prefer to have it go as painlessly as possible, but also to load/run as many of my current apps as possible.

As I understand it, Mint is basically a distribution of Ubuntu, so I was wondering if the directions I found for migrating a laptop form one Ubuntu install to another would work.

They basically tell me to use Synaptic Package Manager to save the "markings", and then to copy these folders (except using my user name, of course):

/home/aaron/.config  
/home/aaron/.gconf  
/home/aaron/.gnome2  
/home/aaron/.gnome2_private  
/home/aaron/.local  
/home/aaron/.mozilla

There are a few things I want to save, such as music, downloads and pictures, but besides that, can I pretty much follow the same instructions and have a full, clean install of Mint, since(As I understand it) they are almost the same OS?

One of the guides wanted me to copy everything in /home, which is like 100 GB…

Thanks for any suggestions, I just don't want to hose anything by using outdated tips, or I would have just used the closed post from a few years back as my guide.

Best Answer

Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu.

Main Desktop Environments:

Ubuntu -> Unity
Linux Mint -> Cinnamon

That means that some of your configuration files may not work correctly, and do not overwrite any system/user file that will affect how the system work. Unless you are sure its ok to modify.

The best thing you can do is to copy your files using this system:

Open the file manager
Browse to the /home/user directory
Copy (don't move!) all the files from Downloads to /home/user2/Downloads
Check you did a good job.
Now delete /home/user/Downloads
Go back to step 3 and repeat for Documents, Videos, ...

And write somewhere a list with the programs that you have installed. And if you installed them manually take a note where you find it.

If you have modified any files, like .bashrc, then remember to copy the changes you made.

Linux Mint has already installed configuration files and it is not the same as Ubuntu's.

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Ubuntu – Copy Ubuntu distro with all settings from one computer to a different one

Your best shot is imaging software like Clonezilla or FSArchiver. They'll make sure you get the exact copy of the source OS.

Another neat way is TAR Backup, but you'll have to fix UUIDs are reinstall Grub.

In case you prefer the manual way, as outlined in the question, then copying the home folder will take care of dconf and gconf.

Ubuntu – Batch-convert and split .ape with .cue to .flac in various folders from terminal

I would do this in multiple steps, since you do this rarely. Transparency is more important than automation here. But a single line is also possible. I assume that if you use only one command for all the files each step, this is what you intended.

You need to have ffmpeg (or avconv), shntool and cuetools installed.

To convert all your .ape to .flac in place:

find . -name "*.ape" -exec sh -c 'exec ffmpeg -i "$1" "${1%.ape}.flac"' _ {} \;

If you install the patched MAC encoder and decoder for APE files from http://www.etree.org/shnutils/shntool/, this first step is unnecessary. But you would need to compile it with g++ and yasm yourself. Same goes for .tta files, which are also often used instead of .ape.

Split and name .flac files:

find . -name "*.cue" -exec sh -c 'exec shnsplit -f "$1" -o flac -t "%n_%p-%t" "${1%.cue}.flac"' _ {} \;

If shnsplit is also used for the conversion, replace the .flac in "${1%.cue}.flac" with the extension of the format you are converting from.

%n – track number
%p – performer
%t – track name

is taken from the .cue file for the .flac file names. To tag the resulting, split .flac files:

find . -name "*.cue" -execdir sh -c 'exec cuetag "$1" *.flac' _ {} \;

Remove the remaining CDImage.ape.cue, CDImage.flac, and CDImage.ape files at your leisure. The names are unique, so a simple find . -name "CDImage*" -delete is sufficient, except if Mozart made a composition starting with CDImage which I am not aware of.

For shnsplit to work, all necessary encoders/decoders need to be installed so it can read and write files. Modules for APE (and for the TTA format) would need to be compiled from source, the others by installing the package (i. e. FLAC).

This works for all standard cases where .cue and .tta/.flac/.ape files have the same name, except for the extension.

Side remark for others: If you deal with this conversion, your source files might be of Japanese origin, where APE and TTA were more popular than elsewhere. If the .cue files were initially SHIFT-JIS coded and now opened as UTF-8, the shnsplit step will break. You need to rename the .cue files with

find . -name "*.cue" -exec rename 's/\.cue$/.cux/' -- {} +

and convert the intermediate files to UTF-8 with

find . -name "*.cux" -exec sh -c 'exec iconv -f SHIFT-JIS -t UTF-8 -o "${1%.cux}.cue" -- "$1"' _ {} \;

before you attempt to do the steps above. Don't forget to get rid of the .cux files when you are done with:

find . -name "*.cux" -delete

Best Answer

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