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I am looking to upgrade from 13.04 to the upcoming 13.10 but have a few questions about how to handle the upgrade whilst having the least impact on my current setup.

I have these partitions on my brand new SSD : 

/boot - 512 MB
/ - 30 GB
/ - 30 GB (for alternate install, I like to try different distros on my laptop)
/usr/local/bin - 20 GB (contains all my dev env binaries like java6, java7, ant, sbt, eclipse, sublime text etc., manually installed by me)
/home - 65GB
swap - 8 GB (same as RAM)
data - remaining 70 GB

I have windows that came with the laptop installed on my slower 7200rpm spindle disk and am using its remainder 400GB as my primary data storage.

  1. I am looking at the easiest way to upgrade with a clean install to the latest version of ubuntu while keeping the following intact :

    • (done) home folder (including ssh keys, wine, all user configurations, etc.)
    • user defined env variables used for development (pointing to /usr/local/bin in ~/.zshrc for making commands like java, scala, ant etc available on CLI)
    • programs installed like f.lux, shutter, guake, clipit, terminator, git etc.
    • startup applications like skype, bitmessage, dropbox etc. startup applications
    • (done) custom ppa packages added
    • installed and configured app indicators

  2. Should I change my partition strategy? im not aware if there is a better way of partitioning the disk to install all the operating systems according to my requirements.

  3. What should my backup policy be? Should I create another partition on my spindle disk to save local backups? How big should it be? What folders should I backup?

To partially fill in the blanks for Q1. : I found this link which helps in recovering the ppa list and installed packages. There is also another link with a similar motive.

So my problem of ppa, installed packages, home directory is resolved. But im concerned about my /usr/local/bin, my startup applications and my installed app indicators. If my dev environment remains unaltered im happy.

Community
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cyberjar09
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    You can always manually choose the partitions to be used in the install. Your startup applications should stay in your home partition and thus remain. Also, I don't think /usr/local/bin is necessary. I generally believe you should never manually touch anything outside of /home, /media and /opt – kiri Oct 15 '13 at 09:45
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    You can have multiple operating systems on the same btrfs filesystem (in different snapshots) with a little tweaking on /etc/fstab (mount option subvol). Pros: easy operating system version rollback, you could test a new release without losing the old one (snapshot the current subvolume, do-release-upgrade, do not delete the old OS snapshot until you're satisfied with the new one) --- share empty space (maybe you could afford even a third OS?) --- all the btrfs nice things like copy-on-write snapshots, etc. – ignis Oct 15 '13 at 09:54
  • @ignis +1 for the btrfs suggestion. – cyberjar09 Oct 15 '13 at 10:03
  • two things @minerz029 : + I had no idea that startup applications like the ones I have setup here : screenshot will remain if I dont touch my /home and + what is the purpose of /opt partition? – cyberjar09 Oct 15 '13 at 10:06
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    Your startup applications will remain but you'll need to reinstall the corresponding packages. /opt is used mainly as a place to unpack software which is in a .tar.gz file (at least for me), though Google Chrome does install to a subfolder of /opt. See the FHS section on /opt – kiri Oct 15 '13 at 11:06
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    Everpad has no installable candidate under 13.10 (as of this moment). – Jos Oct 15 '13 at 11:58
  • /opt is "yet another" place for software not handled by the package manager, see this question and probably others. – ignis Oct 15 '13 at 18:54
  • IMHO 8GB of swap is a waste of space (only Windows is so memory inefficient). For proof of concept, load your system as heavily as you are likely to and open a terminal and issue the command free see: http://imgur.com/ohQGAhb – Elder Geek Jun 17 '14 at 13:03

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