Helping my daughter install Mint 17

[rockydee]

Ok- so I convinced my daughter to use Mint 17. She's had it a while likes it. She went into Synaptic Pkg Mgr and created a script of all the programs she installed in the event she needs/wants to do a reinstall of Mint 17.

Our question is this- if she did a reinstall of 17, should she run the script first and then the updates, or do the updates and then run the script to reinstall here packages? Confusing? Thanks-RD

 

[badtlc]

It shouldn't matter.

 

[ClutchDisc]

Doesn't matter, do it in whatever order you prefer!

 

[dparm]

Personally I'd rather do the updates and THEN install my apps. I think this applies to any OS, really.

 

[rockydee]

Originally Posted By: dparm
Personally I'd rather do the updates and THEN install my apps. I think this applies to any OS, really.


That's the way we were leaning. Then I thought if the app script ran first, a lot of the updates would be installed with them? Not sure, it seems it doesn't matter much I guess.

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: rockydee
Ok- so I convinced my daughter to use Mint 17. She's had it a while likes it. She went into Synaptic Pkg Mgr and created a script of all the programs she installed in the event she needs/wants to do a reinstall of Mint 17.

What I do is make a tarball of the entire system (minus the tarball's intended location, unless you want a terribly nasty surprise). That's the easiest way I've ever backed up the system.

I outlined the procedure here once before.

 

[rockydee]

Thanks Garak- Now she's telling me she wants a bigger hdd, and wants me to put it in before I head back east. What I was going to do was a clean install of mint 17, run the script, do the updates, and then put her data back in which she backs up with lucky bu. It seems pretty easy.

Your method is cool I'll try that on my machine when I get back home in September.

 

[uc50ic4more]

For what it's worth, it is a "best practice" to update immediately after an installation; so it is essentially "Job 0". Luckily, during an Ubuntu-based installation (this includes Mint) you are given the option to apply updates during installation. Do that.

Further - and I wouldn't call this a walk in the park, but it isn't prohibitively difficult, either - you can use a utility in Mint to create your own live + install-able .iso of *your* system. This is intended for folks who want to create their own Mint derivative distribution but works really well as a backup of your system configuration. I am not a Mint user at the moment and forget the name of this utility and whether it is installed by default. (EDIT: I found this:

Remastering tool (mintConstructor): A tool for remastering Linux Mint. It is not installed by default in any Linux Mint edition, but is included in the repositories and used by the developers for creating ISO files. Users interested in creating their own distribution based on Linux Mint can make use of this tool to do so.)

I have used this thing before and it takes some fumbling around, but once you've got the hang of it you can even control what user-space settings get installed by default.

 

[badtlc]

also create at least 2 partitions. first partition at / and then a second at /home/.

By doing this you can reinstall the linux OS as much as you want, update, etc, and when you reinstall all the apps, the settings are already there and no need to re-setup all the app settings. All the app settings are kept in the /home/user location.

This of course assumes that if you format and reinstall linux you reuse the exact same username.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: badtlc
This of course assumes that if you format and reinstall linux you reuse the exact same username.


... And that you are installing distros with the same versions of applications; else you may have bad configuration files if you were using Ubuntu 14.04 with My_Awesome_Program version 4, then installed Debian Stable which packaged My_Awesome_Program version 1.5! I always use a live media to move ALL of my /home/.* (meaning anything in my /home directory that begins with a dot, which means it is hidden from normal view. Most configuration files are "hidden" in this way) to /home/OLD_CONFIG. After installing a new distro, I can move config files back one at a time to make sure nothing goes haywire.

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: rockydee
Your method is cool I'll try that on my machine when I get back home in September.

It can definitely save a lot of grief is one is messing around to the point where one may break something!

 

[yonyon]

Originally Posted By: rockydee

Our question is this- if she did a reinstall of 17, should she run the script first and then the updates, or do the updates and then run the script to reinstall here packages? Confusing? Thanks-RD


Wouldn't the simplest way be to modify the script such that it also marks all updates so the package manager can just grab all the packages at once?

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: yonyon
Originally Posted By: rockydee

Our question is this- if she did a reinstall of 17, should she run the script first and then the updates, or do the updates and then run the script to reinstall here packages? Confusing? Thanks-RD


Wouldn't the simplest way be to modify the script such that it also marks all updates so the package manager can just grab all the packages at once?


The script will not be version-specific for any application. It'll grab the package listed from the repository (of which there will only be one: the most recent) and install that. (eg. It will simply install the package called "foo" and not "foo-1.3.4-ubuntu6" or some such thing. The repositories only keep one version of a package kicking around unless it is a library or framework upon which some applications may require something older. Python is in the repositories and is even installed in two different versions in many distros. Same with the gstreamer codecs: Some applications are looking for version 0.10.x while others have moved on to 1.x so both usually get installed.)

Telling the installer to install updates during the installation coupled with running the script generated by Synaptic will set everything up automagically.

 

[rockydee]

You guys rock. Just a little confusion here. I put in a new HDD for her earlier today set up [/], [/home], and swap. I installed the Os on [/], data on [/home]. Would it be OK to install the patches, then run the script of installed packages and call it gtg? I don't want to get in over my head/comfort zone.