MX Linux Forum

I have used the preserve /home option a couple of times when moving from MX-18 to MX-19. It has made it easier for me to upgrade. But I was never sure if this feature was intended for use when over-writing with MX over a non-MX distro. Is that usually an acceptable option? Say I have Fedora 31 on one partition and /home on a separate partition. Then I decide to replace Fedora with MX. Can I use the preserve /home option safely?

Today I decided to over-write an Xubuntu 16.04 installation with MX-KDE 19.2. I used the preserve /home option. It seems to be fine. I reinstalled a few packages but the settings have mostly been preserved. I had to update a couple add-ons in Kodi and the browsers. But it generally seems to be running normally.

Is this because it is a similar apt based distro? Or is this to be expected no matter what distro I write over?

Seaken64

As a rule of thumb it's generally unwise to reuse another distro's home directory for an MX installation because besides containing your data, your home directory also contains hidden system configuration files and directories which may conflict with MX and lead to instability and weird issues sooner or later. It doesn't always happen but I have seen it happen before. It's better to back up your data and let MX create a new home directory during installation then restore the data afterward.

Thanks Jay. I thought that was the way it worked. I am going to stay with this install and put it through it's paces and see if there is any ill effects of re-using the Xubuntu /home. But I will know for the future that this feature is best used with MX to MX installs.

Seaken64

I suspect in your case there was hardly any overlap between your xubuntu's xfce configs and mx kde's plasma configs, which is why there hasn't been much of an issue.

True, asqwerth. Where issues have occurred was when people had another Xfce distro then installed regular MX and preserved home. That created conflicts in the Xfce settings and configuration files. Probably because of an Xfce version mismatch between the distros.

This is interesting. I had asked another question about having the XFCE desktop available in the MXPI on MX-KDE and D_O mentioned that it wasn't a good idea to mix the two and that MX doesn't write configs to the home folder (or something like that - I may have that wrong as I am still a little confused about how these desktop Environments work.)

Is there a lot of overlap between XFCE settings and Plasma settings? (Asqwerth suggests maybe not in this case). Or is it only in the MX customizations that it can be a problem? I wonder what would have happened if I had chosen to install MX-XFCE instead of MX-KDE. Maybe I got lucky by using MX-KDE.

Seaken64

Not only another distro: Months ago I installed KDE from MXPI on MX 19 Xfce (as the second DE) on another partition, just out of curiosity. But the themes, some applications began to look weird especially on KDE.. they began interfering at some point. Finally I removed the whole thing :)

seaken64 wrote: Mon Aug 31, 2020 5:39 pm This is interesting. I had asked another question about having the XFCE desktop available in the MXPI on MX-KDE and D_O mentioned that it wasn't a good idea to mix the two and that MX doesn't write configs to the home folder (or something like that - I may have that wrong as I am still a little confused about how these desktop Environments work.)....
Seaken64

Yes, you confused what he said. Dolphin said that right now if you install kde plasma from mxpi (using popular apps tab) on top of your mx xfce system, you would get something close to and not exactly what is in mxkde.

The reason was that in order to get plasma exactly like mxkde, some config settings needed to be changed/saved onto your home partition together with the plasma install, and MX's policy is not to affect things on your pre-existing home partition when you install packages.

It's different when you install straight from the iso because the iso can be made with some settings and configs in home already pre-populated.

asqwerth wrote: Mon Aug 31, 2020 9:16 pm

seaken64 wrote: Mon Aug 31, 2020 5:39 pm This is interesting. I had asked another question about having the XFCE desktop available in the MXPI on MX-KDE and D_O mentioned that it wasn't a good idea to mix the two and that MX doesn't write configs to the home folder (or something like that - I may have that wrong as I am still a little confused about how these desktop Environments work.)....
Seaken64

Yes, you confused what he said. Dolphin said that right now if you install kde plasma from mxpi (using popular apps tab) on top of your mx xfce system, you would get something close to and not exactly what is in mxkde.

The reason was that in order to get plasma exactly like mxkde, some config settings needed to be changed/saved onto your home partition together with the plasma install, and MX's policy is not to affect things on your pre-existing home partition when you install packages.

It's different when you install straight from the iso because the iso can be made with some settings and configs in home already pre-populated.

Not unusual that I'm confused! :) And yes, your answer makes sense.

So, my next question would be if I could add the special MX packages to my own iso install of plasma to end up with essentially the same as MX-KDE. But I suppose this would be hard to manage and update, right?

Seaken64

Read following thread starting from here:
viewtopic.php?p=593697#p593697

Also you could just try installing KDE using popular apps tab in mxpi and see how it goes.

It might be easier to delete the dot-files and dot-directories (or move them to a new directory as backup) and then you should be able to preserve the home without worrying about conflicts with MX.