I have a workstation running Ubuntu v10.04. It is in almost continuous use as my primary workstation.

Hurrah! I bought a new workstation. This time I installed Mint-12. So far, I've been playing because all of my stuff is on the other box.

What I've done so far:

• made a tar-ball of olde $HOME contents
• moved it to the new workstation in a folder called
  $HOME/oldeStuff/
• unpacked the tar-ball

It is straight forward to get access to docs and pix and such.

Question: How do I migrate all of the settings from the various
$HOME/dot-something files and folders?

I'm concerned that new editions of favorite packages will get snarled
should I simply replace any dot-something contents with the files
from the olde edition.

Some software (eg, evolution) no longer uses dot-something
but has moved stuff into gnome-compliant places. I suppose that these
will require one-by-one resolution of settings, but I'm open to
guidance from those better informed than I am.

Question: Every advice says, "Use fresh install." If that is good
advice, what is the recommendation for migration of $HOME?

Thanks in advance,
~~~ 0;-Dan

A valid concern and there is no easy answer; you just have to research or try them one by one. At least it's a new installation so if replacing a dot-something contents with the files from the olde edition fails, you simply revert and start customising from scratch.

FWIW I successfully retained these dot-somethings on the last upgrade (YMMV):

• .VirtualBox
• .azureus
• .keepass
• .mozilla
• .openoffice.org
• .thunderbird
• Templates (not a dot-something!)

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