summary: I'm preparing to migrate a laptop from Ubuntu Lucid to Linux Mint Debian Edition 10 and want to have the same packages (c.p.) active after the migration. I believe I know how to migrate the packages using `dpkg` and `apt-get`, but would prefer to migrate the packages using `aptitude` alone. Is this possible? Are there reasons not to do this?
details: I've been running Ubuntu on a laptop mostly happily for some time, but have wanted to get * proprietary multimedia working "out of the box" * "rolling releases" (aka, more updates without upgrades) So when I heard about LMDE, I immediately tried it, and was pleased to see that everything (that I checked, anyway) worked OOTB (i.e. when booting the live DVD). I'm now preparing to migrate Ubuntu -> LMDE. The box has separate root and home partitions, so to CMA I first made * images of both partitions (using clonezilla) * backed up /home (with a script using partly `duplicity` and partly just `rsync`) The final thing I believe I need to do (please suggest anything else I should know) is to backup the list of currently-active (installed and selected) packages so as to be able to restore them quickly and completely in the new environment, so that I don't need to manually install, e.g., chromium and emacs. Am I missing anything? If not: >From other reading, one way to do this is # in terminal in ubuntu dpkg --get-selections > "${PACKAGE_FILE}" # in terminal in LMDE sudo dpkg --set-selections < "${PACKAGE_FILE}" sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade sudo aptitude update sudo aptitude -s full-upgrade Is that correct? If so: I've been managing its packages exclusively with `aptitude` and would prefer to continue doing so. I'd like to know, 1 Is there a way to do all of the above using only `aptitude`? if not, 2 Is there a way to do all of the above using only `aptitude` and `dpkg`? I.e. is there an `aptitude` equivalent of `apt-get dselect-upgrade`? FWIW I don't see that argument in `info aptitude`. alternatively, 3 Is there a reason to prefer the [`dpkg`, `apt-get`, `aptitude`] workflow above to a purely-`aptitude` workflow for this usecase? If possible please reply to me as well as the list (I'm on the digest), and TIA, Tom Roche <tom_ro...@pobox.com> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87y667y15i....@pobox.com