Installing a new Distro over an old one

steveland?

I'm a bit new at this still but I've Ubuntu installed dual booting with XP

Before I go downloading another ISO can someone tell me can I just install another Linux distro over the one on my Ubuntu partition?

Like can I just put the installer CD in, boot from it, format the partition with Ubuntu on it and the boot partition and then install the new distro onto it?

How will this effect dual booting? Will it just show up as another OS in GRUB when I boot up?

Please don't get technical I'll be completely lost

ethernet

I had great fun setting up my config.

It all worked out perfectly when I reformatted my drive, installed Windows and then Suse. The suggested partitioning wanted to scrub Windows for some reason. I tweaked them and saw "set mount point to C" [or similar]. All's working well [just annoyed that I didn't format in FAT32 -- I wanted to, but it didn't work].

Using the GRUB boot-loader, you have four boot choices:
1: Windows
2: Linux
3: Linux [Safe]
4: Floppy
[probably will vary on your system. Also the option to include further arguments like "splash=verbose". In YaST, you can edit the Boot-Loader, changing the default OS].

steveland?

I've no idea what you just said

I have dual-booting working properly, I just want to get rid of the Ubuntu OS and install something else over it without having to get sticky and technical with GRUB or having to format the whole HDD and put Windows on again

niallb

You should have no problem installing over the old ubntu partitions.

The new distro will set up the bootloader during install,
and should detect and configure your windows partition
on its boot menu.

Make sure you take a look at your ubuntu install first
and see if there's anything you might need, as you'll
be formatting the partitions.

Just be real careful before you agree to formatting
any partitions!
Check the numbers before you run the install.
Write out a copy of the output of fdisk -l /dev/hda first.
You may need to change the 'hda' above if you're on a different drive. Type 'mount' and use the first three letters of the drive you see mentioned for your own system.

Good luck with the install,
NiallB

Syth

Do you want to upgrade an existing distribution (ie go from Ubuntu 5.04 to 5.10) or completly wipe one distro and install another in it's place?

If you want to wipe, then there's no problem with doing that, that's fine. Though of course you will lose all data on that partition, including setting unique to your pc (ie the contents of /etc) and possibly your /home partition.

If you want to upgrade and existing distro, you shouldn't lose any tweaks or anything. How you upgrade depends on your distro. With Ubuntu a simple "sudo apt-get upgrade" then "sudo apt-get update" (or the other way around), should do it.

niallb

Syth wrote:

If you want to upgrade and existing distro, you shouldn't lose any tweaks or anything. How you upgrade depends on your distro. With Ubuntu a simple "sudo apt-get upgrade" then "sudo apt-get update" (or the other way around), should do it.

Syth is right - an ubuntu upgrade usually goes very smoothly.
The procedure is as follows:

apt get update to get the latest package lists for your current version.
apt-get upgrade to install the updates.

Next, edit the file /etc/apt/sources.list and replace
the version name (for example hoary for 5.04)
with the latest release "breezy" on each deb line.

apt-get update to download the new package lists, and
apt-get dist-upgrade to upgrade the distribution.

If you don't have broadband, a breezy Ubuntu CD will
offer you the chance to upgrade the existing installation.

If you don't have much you want to hold on to,
a straight install may be simpler, no matter what distro you want to try.

NiallB

Cake Fiend

If it's a different distro you're installing, now's a good time to make a /home partition (if you don't already have one) in case you want to try another distro at a later date.

steveland?

Sico wrote:

If it's a different distro you're installing, now's a good time to make a /home partition (if you don't already have one) in case you want to try another distro at a later date.

Yeh I've got it set up already so that it auto-mounts My Documents from the Windows partition, a partition I have on a seperate hard drive for random stuff so that if I ever reinstall windows it's saved and also I have a FAT32 partition on a seperate drive so I can write to it in Linux and still access it in Windows.

The partition Ubuntu is installed onto has very little personal stuff (especially since I haven't been able to use it for ages with the whole wireless mouse going bananas in it)

I'm not looking to update really, just want to install other distros and try them out (I've gone through the whole LiveCD thing, I prefer having an OS installed so I can mess about with it)

Cheers for the replies folks