Ubuntu

Help in reinstalling ubuntu

Asked by ChristianStamm

Hi,

I'm up to reinstall my ubuntu-box. After upgrades from Hoary to Breezy to Dapper, trying to install compiz/beryl and other software from 3rd party repositories, running a script called EasyUbuntu (*#$%##!!), fiddling around with xorg.conf and /etc/ in general, changing some hardware, etc.. the system feels somehow borked. When something is not working, I often don't know if i broke it myself times ago or which of the other circumstances above might be the reason.

What I want to do is a clean install Dapper or Feisty. The partitions / and /usr/ shall be formatted before, but not /home. I want the gnome desktop out of the box, so most gnome settings I made shall be deleted. I don't want no compiz/beryl, no KDE.

Some of my questions are:
- Which effects besides "gnome-out-of-the-box" might deleting ~/.gnome an ~/.gnome2 before installation have? Is there anything I might not expect to loose?
- What kind of data lives in ~/.gnome_private?
- Are there other configuration directories i should be aware of? E.g. i want to keep ~/.ssh and ~/.maven but maybe want to delete the conf of some random application.
- I will make a backup of /etc/ is there something else i should not miss?
- which other questions should i have asked?

any help and advice is appreciated.

kind regards
Christian

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Sam Cater (wraund-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#1

well, all the hidden folders that begin with a '.' usually have confuration and user preferences data.

If you are going to do a clean install my advice would be to back-up all the /. folders you want (like .ssh and .maven) onto a memory stick or something, then after the fresh install you should be able to just copy them back. If you use a different username, you may need to change the folder privilages using root, but apart from that it should work fine. Many people do this and often works for them

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Best ChristianStamm (stammi) said : 		#2

Thanks. Your answer makes me feel more secure. I however decided to wait till some days after the feisty release so I'll have some more time to think it over. So still any hints are appreciated.