Transferring Ubuntu from one Laptop to Another

Wats_in_a_name

Is it possible to make a carbon copy of a install of untuntu and install on a new laptop including all settings, customisations & files?

Capt'n Midnight

generally speaking yes, check out clonezilla

Pygmalion

If you're just worried about user files and settings and not global things (and installed packages) just copying over your /home directory should work for 99% of things.

Naikon

Pygmalion wrote: »

If you're just worried about user files and settings and not global things (and installed packages) just copying over your /home directory should work for 99% of things.

This. The lack of a proper registry in Linux is a great thing. The gnome registry does not count.

Capt'n Midnight

Naikon wrote: »

This. The lack of a proper registry in Linux is a great thing. The gnome registry does not count.

You wouldn't be too far wrong to treat the registry as a copy protection mechanism

Naikon

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

You wouldn't be too far wrong to treat the registry as a copy protection mechanism

Good point. I am at the stage now where I believe anything that is intentionally obfuscated/poorly designed is a method of keeping shareholders at bay:pac: Probably a common viewpoint with DRM in everything I guess. The GPL isn't the biggest fan of draconian copyright/patents now that you mention it.

niallb

If you want to match up the same package list and you're not going the clonezilla route,
dpkg has a great feature where you can copy the selection of packages installed.

On the original laptop, run the following command:

dpkg --get-selections >Laptop1-get-selections.pkglist

Do a basic install on the second laptop, copy the file over and run this as root:

dpkg --set-selections <Laptop1-get-selections.pkglist

This prepares the laptop for the package list,
and

apt-get dselect-upgrade

will pull down and install the list of packages.

Possible hiccups occur if you've enabled different repositories on the first laptop,
but copying over the contents of /etc/apt to the new laptop prior to running the commands above will take care of that after apt-get update

Mycroft H

niallb wrote: »

If you want to match up the same package list and you're not going the clonezilla route,
dpkg has a great feature where you can copy the selection of packages installed.

On the original laptop, run the following command:

dpkg --get-selections >Laptop1-get-selections.pkglist

Do a basic install on the second laptop, copy the file over and run this as root:

dpkg --set-selections <Laptop1-get-selections.pkglist

This prepares the laptop for the package list,
and

apt-get dselect-upgrade

will pull down and install the list of packages.

Possible hiccups occur if you've enabled different repositories on the first laptop,
but copying over the contents of /etc/apt to the new laptop prior to running the commands above will take care of that after apt-get update

very handy - i never knew that feature existed :pac:

MackDeToaster

I just use Remastersys

dioltas

You could use dd.

niallb

MackDeToaster wrote: »

I just use Remastersys

That's a great tool, and I've used it to set up a livecd with the option of booting standalone,
or booting connected to a remote network over an openvpn tunnel.
It's able to log on to remote NIS accounts on the destination network, though performance
for home directories depends very much on your internet link.

I must give it another go to bring things up to date.
For a while there it wasn't working too well with Ubuntu 9.10 I think,
but it's probably long sorted out at this stage.
What's the latest ubuntu release you've used it with ?