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How do you upgrade/remove a side-by-side installation?

rated 0 times [ 4] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 810 / 2 Years ago, sat, march 26, 2022, 12:44:33

I've hit some snags in the last two upgrades (which I've been able to resolve with time, patience and Ask Ubuntu :) so come 12.04 I'm considering a side-by-side installation. Perhaps even installing a pre-release before that (because virtual machine testing can't reveal hardware-related issues).

So, let's say I installed a side-by-side version. As far as I can tell this splits my existing partition and installs a brand new Ubuntu on partition 2. If all goes well, there are no hardware issues, and my favorite apps seem to be working, how do I switch to a one-sided installation? If I can't, how do I do a side-by-side installation the next time?

(And, am I crazy to consider using a pre-release version to do a side-by-side installation?)

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throecember

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4 Years ago

answered 2 Years ago coffekne · Accepted Answer

Can I suggest another approach? Keep the dual boot and share all your files with both systems.

Why? Because in 6 months you will have the same problem with 12.04 and 12.10.

Example 1

An example of what I want to suggest...

OS1 (11.10): /, swap, /home. Total can be as low as 25 Gb.

OS2 (12.04): /, swap and /home. Total can be as low as 25 Gb.

OS1+OS2: data partition.

(25Gb: 10 for root, 5 for swap, 10 for home: it works because I symlink the directories in home to the data partition. That way I can have the same icons on my desktop for both systems but also when I reformat 1 of the 2 and reinstall another Ubuntu).

Example 2

A slightly different example if you're trying to save HDD space...

OS1 (11.10): /, swap, /home. Total can be as low as 25 Gb.

OS2 (12.04): /, swap. Total can be as low as 15 Gb.

OS1+OS2: data partition.

Here you can mount the /home into OS2 (so just mounting not formatting when you setup your system) and use a different username for both OSes. That way you will not run into any conflicts and you can save a 10 Gb of every other OS you include (you can do this with more than 2 OSes and even SUSE, Redhat, CentOS etc ;) )

I am a big supporter of symlinking.

Example... say your data partition is named 'discworld'. Create all dirs that are now in /home/{user} in that partition...

/discworld/Desktop/

/discworld/Downloads/

...

rm all directories inside `/home/{user}' and then symlink them:

`ln -s /discworld/Desktop Desktop`

`ln -s /discworld/Downloads Downloads`

...

Put all users into 1 group and set discworld to that group: that way you have 1 desktop over the whole systems, all downloads go to 1 location etc etc.

Using the data partition

Either way, ALL interesting files you have go to the data partition. Use the current system (11.10) and keep updating the newest system (12.04). When the newest system (12.04) is up to your standard use that as the current system and use OS1 to install the newer newest release (ie. 12.10).

That way you can always fallback to your last stable Ubuntu.