Installing Kubuntu: Existing partitions..Moving from Linux to Linux??

[dredz]

I'm reading on these forums a lot of support about installing with windows by dual boot.. but I don't find much useful information about moving from linux to linux.

I am using Gentoo currently and I would like to replace it with Kubuntu. One great thing about Gentoo was the enormous amount of documentation.. it even had installation instructions on how to install from within other distros and it was pretty simple, overall.

But with Kubuntu, maybe I'm looking in the wrong places, but I can't find information how to do this. From what I'm reading, I'm not even sure it's possible to install from the install/live discs onto an existing linux partition without having to reformat it and lose all the files. I have a ~200GB partition and I don't have the means,  much less the patience, to back up all my non-system files just to re-copy them back onto a formatted partition.

Is it possible to install Kubuntu on an existing partition without having to format it? Anybody have any success/failure stories on doing so, also?

[aysiu]

Re: Installing Kubuntu: Existing partitions..Moving from Linux to Linux??

It is not possible to install Kubuntu onto an existing partition without reformatting it.

That's why a lot of people will advise you to have a separate /home partition where you keep your documents and settings.

[awakatanka]

Re: Installing Kubuntu: Existing partitions..Moving from Linux to Linux??

If you have the room for it you can also resize that partition. A (k)ubuntu install needs to be bigger then 1.5gig.

Then you can delete all other dirs you don't need and mount the partition with youre stuff as /home. Dunno for sure but thats what i understand is possible. ( I'm 7 to 8 months new in linux)

[askrieger]

Re: Installing Kubuntu: Existing partitions..Moving from Linux to Linux??

The easy way way to save all your valuable stuff is to save it in tarballs. As a Gentoo user, you know ALL about tarballs. make a tarball of your /home/* tree. Make another one of /usr/share/doc/* or /usr/doc/* or wherever Gentoo stores all that good documentation, because (K)Ubuntu is still struggling to emerge from the Debian tradition wherein documentation consists of 2000 copies of the Gnu Copyleft license, one for each installed program, and (if you're lucky) a change log. Then store the tarballs on another computer or on a remvable drive. Once you've installed (K)Ubuntu you can restore your home tree. BTW, you might want lots of little tarballs of your undotted home directories instead of one big one of everything, because the config files for KDE under kubuntu will probably be different from those you used to from Gentoo.