Replacing Fedora 9 with Kubuntu

[jandac]

A few years ago, I took the wrong decision to install Fedora at home. I did not know about Kubuntu at that time, and Debian had some problems with my hardware. With Fedora 9, not only lirc does not work (it never worked, and it will never work in Fedora), but marvelous KDE 3.5 was replaced with horrible, buggy, pre-alpha, non-configurable KDE 4.0. I do not want to use Gnome, so I thought about replacing Fedora with Kubuntu, which I installed at work, and which works without any problem except for a tiny one with ATI graphics card.

1. Can I replace ugly Fedora with Kubuntu without loosing the contents of my $HOME with all configuration (except for changes already done by KDE 4.0)? In particular, I would hate to loose my digikam database of tagged photos.

2. I saw UNetbootin. Can I use it for that purpose, or should I use something else? If the answer is yes, then how to save my $HOME?

3. Will I have to resize my Linux partition? If so, is it possible without loosing the contents? Will it be necessary to perform defragmentation (how, i.e. what prograqm does it)? My disk has 2 partitions: /boot (ext3) and an LVM.

Most tutorials on installation of Linux distribution describe replacement of Windows by Linux. With the advent of non-functional Fedora 9, many people will be in urgent need for a tutorial on a Linux-Linux replacement. Perhaps an automated tool could be created for us, the refugees.

[falko]

I think you can back up your home directory and then, after the Kubuntu installation, restore it by overwriting the new Kubuntu home directory. But I haven't tested this - it might go wrong...

[jandac]

Thanks for your answer. The method you propose seems the obvious, but also the hard thing to do. What I wander about is the way of installing a new distribution without destroying the /home directory. I already use 100,636,044 bytes at /home. Putting them on DVDs, and then restoring the contents from them would take a huge amount of time. If I could resize the partition without loosing its content, and then link my /home there, it would be an ideal solution.

Regards,
Jan

[falko]

Originally Posted by jandac

What I wander about is the way of installing a new distribution without destroying the /home directory.

You could do that if /home was a partition of its own, but that's not the case with your setup.

[jandac]

Someone at a rueda de casino workshop (!) suggested that I should buy an external disk, and install Kubuntu on it. I'm not sure if I can use an USB-connect disk for that, but it sems worth trying. Fedora is not usable.

Regards,
Jan