[Need] Migration Tips!

So... lately I've been thinking of moving to a fully based debian-distro in the same that I actually rely on debian repositories rather than Ubuntu ones. I have a few reasons on why I'm doing this. For starters, in the future Ubuntu will "force" other distros to use Mir and I don't really see Linux Mint ditching it away. Doing it manually is.... not really something I would like to do.

So, I'll be moving to Crunchbag Linux hopefully at the end of the month. It's based on Debian stable "Wheezy" if I'm not mistaken. I'm kinda moving forward with my decision; I've liked Debian distros since the beginning and moving feels like the right choice.

Anyway, I need to get a 2-3TB external drive to back up my stuff. Any tips on how to securely backup my /home is most welcome.

No data loss of course... I'm pretty sure NSA won't do much with my data

As for the backup procedure, I swear by rsync. Everything is kept perfectly intact as long as you use all required flags for keeping permissions, ownership, both symlinks and hardlinks intact.

rsync -aAHXv /path/to/directory/you/wish/to/backup /path/to/backup/directory

This will create an identical copy of the specified directory. And rsync can be run later to update the backup in case there are changes, and it will only update changed files. If you want it to delete files on the backup that no longer exist in the source path, then use the --delete option.

Most excellent, I'm gonna run this once I obtain a 3TB Ext HD, hopefully format my NTFS HDD to ext4

So I'm finally on debian sid... or almost there... It's been quite a ride today, mostly due to issues with GPT disks I had to sit down a read a bunch of stuff on how to make win7 and debian co-exists. Yes, in the end I had to make a choice and I went with dual booting. I'm not particularly happy about it but on the most relevant part, I need it for work too, as well as to get some totally-incompatible games with WINE.

My personal project is temporarily on hold, no biggie I got that backup through rsync, plus I always commit to git.

That said... I'm like... learning "how to use linux" again. I'm too used on typing "sudo" on every admin task. Now I'm going to learn the debian way (or add myself to sudoers if I can't get used to it)
I might not add myself to sudoers though, mostly to keep myself from screwing up stuff.

You need to have your user added to sudoers to be able to make use of "sudo", so any distros you've used in the past have already done that for your user. Although normally the user is just added to some admin type group, such a "wheel" which is the default.

As for editing sudoers, as long as you do it with the visudo command, you are not in danger of messing stuff up as it will not let you save the file if there are syntax errors in it.

I am curious about one thing, has Debian started using Systemd as init system? I recall reading somewhere that it was up for discussion. I know a lot of people dislike Systemd, but my experience with it in Arch is quite positive. I find it very easy to manage system daemons and services.

I asked that before migrating to Debian sid. No, it's not installed by default but it's readily available in the repo. just apt-get it as you normal would. (Asked this in reddit a few days agO)

Additional note:

I installed kde-full package for a full desktop experience, mind you, I love KDE. Now, weirdly it pulled over systemd.

----------- end of note

I so don't regret moving to Debian... everything is... surprisingly fast. Even when I pulled over a kde-full I still use only 500mb of memory versus linux mint which used around 1GB+ at the very start...

Sorry, I misunderstood your post. I assumed you were talking about after installing sudo. After installing the sudo package, there should already be in the default sudoers file a line with "wheel" that simply needs uncommenting. Adding yourself to the wheel group should provide full access to using sudo for your user.

Interesting to hear that Debian does not include stuff like Sudo on base install, sounds like it is pretty lightweight on the base installation. On Arch I also get just over 500mb of memory usage after starting my desktop environment. That also includes the Pidgin chat client and the Dropbox client. The biggest memory hogs to my experience (except for games) is Dropbox when actively syncing, and Firefox. After having been on for hours, Firefox can easily use up to 300-350mb.

As it is now, 8gb of RAM almost seems like overkill since I can't even recall times my system has needed 4gb. Then there were the days when I still used Windows, which seemed to need 4gb just to stay alive.

Debian was one of my considerations a year back, but I never got around to testing it. I might give it a try in virtualbox just to see the installation process and how customizable it is.

Personally I think you are going to like Debian unstable. It's fast, it's slim and you can still mix arch linux wiki into it.

I did a minimal installation, switched to debian unstable in the repos. I installed netselect-apt so it could install the fastest mirror. Needless to say, it was quite a smooth ride. I still have some problems with Skype but... everything else works. out of the box.

This weekend I am planning to repartition my main hard drive and reinstall Arch. This is something I've been thinking of for quite some time since I know I made a little mess of things regarding package dependencies when I first started with Arch, particularly when I tried the Arch Build System. Now after having used Arch for almost a year and hopefully knowing everything I need to know, I want to start over and make sure everything is set up exactly as I want. I even intend to install such things as new themes using the Arch Build System so all files on my system outside of /home is owned by a package and can be managed by the package manager pacman.

While I do this, I will create two 10gb partitions for the purpose of testing out other distros properly. There is only so much you can do in vbox, and the best experience is to try on the real hardware. Debian is one distro I want to test, particularly the unstable branch. I intended to have it for some time, that's why I decided to use two partitions for testing other distros. So I might have Debian running in dual boot on UEFI with Arch during next week.

If freebsd could boot on UEFI then I would be giving that a try as well, but from what information I can find, it does not seem to support UEFI yet.

I would dare say that people using Ubuntu and Linux Mint are missing out on how great Debian is. I'll admit that after almost a week of the installation I'm totally in love with my new system. It's fast, responsive, and mostly importantly: stable.

Now, I know my way around debian-based stuff so maybe I'm being a little bit exaggerated. However, if you know how GNU/Linux works and where are the configuration files... then why do you need super ultra friendly distros when you can set up everything with a debian minimal install, which will detect most of the hardware, except video cards (NVIDIA/AMD).

Also, I just applied the freetype-infinality _patch_... and the font looks so damn smooth right now. Lastly, I will say to booman. If you create a separated partition for /home, you can pretty much migrate to any distribution with almost no problem. (note that doing it this way will also bring a few issues, mostly regarding the Desktop Environment)

Finally, they fixed skype dependencies this week. I got to install it... I'm really happy now.

I agree with you regarding the beginner friendly distros. Sure they are good if you just want your system up and running in no time. However, any distro that give you more responsibility in how you want your system to be, will make you learn much more. You will also be a lot more familiar with what is really going on, making it easier for you to diagnose and fix any problems you may have.

Just changed my laptop to Debian. Luckily I didn't make the same mistakes I did with my desktop installation where I forgot to separate the /home partition. -_-

No data loss, which makes me really happy I'm just reinstalling KDE back. And that's it.