Moving Fedora from USB drive to internal drive and removing Mint

Ask Fedora
1

So I have decided to move to Linux. I got a spanking new NukBox with Windows 11 installed.
I decided to keep a minimal (small) windows partition and dual boot with Linux. I could not decide which distro so I chose the easiet one, Linux Mint.
I partitioned my 1TB internal drive to be mostly Mint (along side Windows)
I also wanted to try Fedora, so I installed it on an external USB drive.
I prefer Fedora over mint but now I have a dilemma.
How do I move Fedora config (partitions) to my internal drive, removing the Mint install.
I have spent a lot of time configuring Fedora so I would like to keep the config I created if at all possible.
I know its more than using gpart to move the partitions. I’m sure I have to do something with grub as well, but have no clue. I have lots of experience with Windows but very little with Linux. Any help would be appreciated.
Rick

2

I would expect this to be as follows:

Install Fedora in place of mint. Allow it to create a home partition.
Mount your external home partition from the external USB whilst booted into your new Fedora partition
Copy the entire contents of the “external” home partition into your curently mounted home partition.
Reboot
Go.

Of course you can always boot a live environment, mount the external home and your newly installed “Internal” home and copy source over to destination, if you prefer.

Either way, all the interesting stuff you spent hours configuring should be recorded in your “home” partition so all you should have to do is copy the “old” one over the “new” one and off you trot.

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Also, welcome - you’re about to have a blast!

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Thanks for the Welcome Steve.
I’ll give this a try.
Already having a blast on Fedora. I think this is goodbye Windows.

5

Ok, tried this:

  • Successfully installed the new Fedora on the internal drive and erased Linux Mint.
  • Booted into the new environment successfully as well.
  • Copied all the contents of the home directory of the USB drive (Desktop, Documents, Downloads etc..) to the new home directory on the internal drive drive.
  • Rebooted
  • No change in the new environment.
  • I validated that the copy did take place. Looks like it did copy the contents of the folders from the USB.

Are there hidden folders config that I missed?
Where do all the configurations exist? Do they have a folder? IE. installed applications, fedora config, repositories I added etc..

6

Definitely yes! Most of your “config” will be in the .config and .local directories of your homedir.

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Ok, that makes sense. How do I copy them to my new home? terminal?

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Either that, or make hidden files visible in your file manager. On Dolphin (KDE) it’s Ctrl-H, or “View >> Show Hidden Files”. I’m not sure about other desktop environments, but I guess that Nautilus etc would have similar options.

9

Ahhhhh,

Found them, copied them, and except for my background, looks like its all working!

THANK YOU!!!

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10

Usually, configuring a linux system involves a) installing additional distro packages, b) system configuration tweaks which usually go in /etc, and c) per-user configuration which goes in the user’s home directory. I find it helpful to keep detailed notes of system tweaks with copies of changed or added files, and a list of installed packages.

Many default configuration files are in /usr, but you want to avoid making changes under /usr as they may be lost with updates. User changes should go to /etc/<path>/<appname>.d/<whatever>.conf. For an example, read the NetworkManager.conf
manual. If you have not used Linux man pages, you need a terminal session. Running man 5 NetworkManager.conf for terminal text, or yelp man:NetworkManager.conf.5 to use the Gnome Help GUI reader (note that the terminal will often get error messages from yelp but the content is generally not affected). Applications that require user specific settings generally put those in $HOME/.config. Package repositories go in /etc/yum.repos.d/.

When moving users to a new linux installation it is often helpful to have a user with a “vanilla” configuration to compare when the moved user home directory has an issue, but since you are moving to the same Fedora version the risk of issues is small.

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Thanks George, good info!