Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: boot-loaders, was: Fw: Penguins: (Was Corrupt Installer Errors??)

People keep telling me to use a different /home partition, but I never do.

I keep most of my data in other partitions and drives though.  Actually
I have run across one or two packages who do not let you go to the
/media folder to get to other partitions and drives.  That was weird.

I use the LTS versions, so I will do a clean install when they come out,
or when I need to replace the /sda drive or some other issue that would
best be fixed with a clean install.  The only problem is getting all of
my packaes, tweaks, and such, installed again.  It took hours and hours
when I replaced my bad 1-TB /sda drive with a new 2-TB one.  I still
find that I messed one or two from time to time.  A month ago was the
drive replacement.

So unless there is an issue, I will not do another clean install for
Ubuntu till 14.04LTS.

As for backups, I have 6-TBs worth of drives and 6-TBs worth of USB
externals.  I back up them on a regular basis.  Well it takes a while
even when I backup the new or modified files.  I use "rsync -aP" in the
terminal to do the backup of the drives. 

Yes, having all the hiddem "dot" folders save to backup it improtant. 
That is where things like emails and address books are located for
Thunderbird, or all the bookmarks and such are located for Firefox.  The
problem is once in a while the packages decide to change where that
folder is located.  LibreOffice went and placed their .libreoffice into
the .config folder a little while back, so the
/home/username/.libroffice folder is no longer used.

To be honest, I tried a 10.04LTS upgrade to 12.04LTS and it ended up
with a lot more file space used than it did for the clean install.  For
some reason, some of the upgraded packages seem not to get rid of all of
their unneeded files.  Then there are all of the Linux header and images
files save.  I had over 30 of them before I did the clean install. That
took a lot of extra drive space.  Since it seems that no of the older
version are removed, it can add up.  That is another good reason to do a
clean install. 

By-the-way
I run Ubuntu 12.04LTS with MATE for my desktop environment. 

Now, I do have laptops that have Windows on them. There are some things
I need Windows for.  Not many, but some.  I stopped at Win7 though.  I
hate Unity for Ubuntu, so why would I like Win8's tile desktop? 

NOW
did you mean to imply that you backup you entire drive[s] only once
every 6 months?  It sort of sounded that way.  I assume you do an
incremented backup - like I do - on a regular basis.  I do the
"important" files every few days or so.  I do the other new/modified
ones every week or so.  Now, if I had a 4th external drive, then I may
do a full/clean bancup of a drive, but I do not like to wipe a backup to
do so.  Plus, for some reason, I am not in favor of just doing a
"overwrite" of all of the file on a disc.  It the externals were in
NTFS, that would make the entire drive one big mess of fragments,
hundreds of thousands of them.  So I tend not to want to do the same
procedure with an ext4 formatted drive.




On 10/06/2013 03:17 PM, Tom Davies wrote:
> Hi :)
> As James said it might well be better to make a separate partition for your /home.  It's easier 
> to do that during the install process but this link can be handy if you want to try this 
> post-install. 
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Partitioning/Home/Moving
> If the way you are doing it keeps working then you might as well stick to that but thee are other 
> advantages to having a separate /home
>
> The way Don is doing it doesn't work for a very few programs (such as Evolution (an alternative 
> to Thunderbird&Lightning)) but does work for almost all afaik.  I used to do the same thing but 
> since 2010 the upgrade process has been really, really smooth so i have often gone for that 
> instead now.  I do occasionally do a fresh install onto the same machine but that is for other 
> reasons (such as testing or just to get more practice or because my fiddling around has broken 
> something i don't know how to fix and then want it back the way it was before i started 
> fiddling).  
>
> I've even found that i can do a fresh install over the top of an existing one and that keeps all 
> my settings&configs as long as i didn't format the partition during the install.  I have 
> installed a 10.04 over the top of a 10.10 and then when i opened Firefox all the same tabs opened 
> that i had left open in the 10.10.  Errr, my main reasoning there was to try to upgrade an 
> unsupported version without having to use subsequent versions that were also unsupported.  By 
> going backwards to the 10.04 LTS (LTS= Long Term Support) i was then able to upgrade LTS to LTS 
> to get to the 12.04LTS.  Again Firefox remembered all my tabs.  Afterwards i realised i could 
> have just done a fresh install of the 12.04 instead of using the 10.04LS as a stepping stone.  
> Hindsight is great isn't it! ;)
>
> Regards from 
> Tom :)  
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: James Knott <james.knott@rogers.com>
> To: LibreOffice <users@global.libreoffice.org>
> Cc: 
> Sent: Sunday, 6 October 2013, 18:39
> Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: boot-loaders, was: Fw: Penguins: (Was Corrupt Installer 
> Errors??)
>
> Don Myers wrote:
> > I started with Ubuntu with version 8.10, and have had each version
> > since then. I generally find it easiest to do a clean install. One
> > advantage of that is every 6 months I have a complete backup of my
> > hard drive. The second advantage is it is very easy to do. Each
> > program has its own hidden file under the home directory, such as
> > .thunderbird, .mozilla, .filezilla, gimp-2.8, etc. Once the new
> > install is completed, and you have the programs installed that you
> > wish from the repository or the ppa, open each one one time to create
> > the .whatever hidden file. Then simply delete that file and replace it
> > with the backed up file, and you have all of your settings, e-mail,
> > bookmarks, server settings for filezille, and everything exactly the
> > way was. Very easy and very fast. Much, much, much faster than doing a
> > clean install of Windows.
> Why not just have a separate /home partition?  That way, you don't have
> to delete & replace the app files.


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