Upgrading laptops

[Fintan]

Hi all, I hope you all are keeping safe!

Ok, I am replacing my very trustworthy HP dv6 from 8 years ago, and upgraded many times with two new HD's (now SDD) three new screens, and finally 16 GB ram to a Lenovo X1 extreme 15 gen2.

My question is: Can I just clone the KUBUNTU OS and /home on the SDD on my HP to the SDD on NVME and just boot up or do I have to do the whole reinstall procedure. Conversely and I do a timeshift of my / on the HP SDD on the do another from a live CD on the new Lenovo?

Any suggestions?

Cheers
Fred

[Schwarzer Kater]

Well, you could try, but several hardware components are different in the Lenovo (e.g. the network hardware, UEFI now - BIOS then?, etc.) compared to your old HP, so afaik you would have to edit and possibly (re-)install stuff by hand afterwards, which will take (a lot of?) time (and knowledge).

Seriously: imho it would be better to go for a clean installation of Kubuntu 20.04 and the programs you need and then transfer your data from your old /home. This will take time, too, but then you will have a clean and working system.

So if you do want to try the cloning and because of this your hair is turning grey… - you can still erase the Lenovo again and do a clean installation afterwards…

[Fintan]

Well, you could try, but several hardware components are different in the Lenovo (e.g. the network hardware, UEFI now - BIOS then?), so I am quite sure you would have to edit and reinstall stuff by hand afterwards, which will take (a lot of?) time (and knowledge).

Seriously: imho I would go for a clean installation of Kubuntu 20.04 and the programs you need and then transfer your data from your old /home. This will take time, too, but you will have a working and clean system…

HI and thanks for the heads up. Your response was what I had suspected, and kave always done in the past.
Just getting lazy I guess .

Cheers
Fred

[oshunluvr]

Generally, the kernel will contain everything you need even if you switch computers and boot it. Unless the new system has something unsupported by the kernel, all you should have to do is boot, do a full update, and test. I don't see why you couldn't at least try it. Worst case, you've spent a half hour. Honestly, if you can pull the drive from the old HP and boot it in the Lenovo, you would know right away and could clone directly from the SSD to the NVME. Cloning would require a suitably large enough USB device and a bootable Clonzilla USB device. Either way, you woudl need to keep track of the UUIDs and make sure you didn't boot with duplicate UUIDs on the system or configure GRUB to use another method to identify the boot device.

Personally, I think a clean install wouldn't be much more time and you would end up knowing you were freshly and correctly installed. I don't know about you, but after 3-4 years running an OS there's always some cruft laying around that I haven't cleaned properly.

[Fintan]

Generally, the kernel will contain everything you need even if you switch computers and boot it. Unless the new system has something unsupported by the kernel, all you should have to do is boot, do a full update, and test. I don't see why you couldn't at least try it. Worst case, you've spent a half hour. Honestly, if you can pull the drive from the old HP and boot it in the Lenovo, you would know right away and could clone directly from the SSD to the NVME. Cloning would require a suitably large enough USB device and a bootable Clonzilla USB device. Either way, you woudl need to keep track of the UUIDs and make sure you didn't boot with duplicate UUIDs on the system or configure GRUB to use another method to identify the boot device.

Personally, I think a clean install wouldn't be much more time and you would end up knowing you were freshly and correctly installed. I don't know about you, but after 3-4 years running an OS there's always some cruft laying around that I haven't cleaned properly.

I will try both (as I am getting lazy ) If a simple boot does not work I always have option reinstall as stated (cleaner).

anyway cheers guys and be well
Fred

[jlittle]

very trustworthy HP dv6

I am incredulous. I suppose after the class action suit (which they lost) they might have improved the design.

Can I just clone the KUBUNTU OS and /home on the SDD on my HP to the SDD...

8 years ago... that was when UEFI was being introduced. If the HP is BIOS/MBR, you don't want that. (Conceivably, you could copy the Linux partitions, and using a Grub USB to try booting into the root partition, install grub-efi, then run grub-install...)

I understand your reluctance to reinstall. The install itself is small compared to the work of reinstalling and reconfiguring everything that's needed. After doing a successful release upgrade from 19.10 to 20.04, I've been trying to work up a clean install, and leave behind the undisciplined, undocumented splurge that was my old Kubuntu. This time, I'm trying to record everything, but after several days work I haven't finished.

[Fintan]

I am incredulous. I suppose after the class action suit (which they lost) they might have improved the design.

8 years ago... that was when UEFI was being introduced. If the HP is BIOS/MBR, you don't want that. (Conceivably, you could copy the Linux partitions, and using a Grub USB to try booting into the root partition, install grub-efi, then run grub-install...)

I understand your reluctance to reinstall. The install itself is small compared to the work of reinstalling and reconfiguring everything that's needed. After doing a successful release upgrade from 19.10 to 20.04, I've been trying to work up a clean install, and leave behind the undisciplined, undocumented splurge that was my old Kubuntu. This time, I'm trying to record everything, but after several days work I haven't finished.

Thanks for the input J. I had completely forgotten about grub-efi. Good idea.
Cheers
F