OT: Tips for clean installs

[Nigel Ridley]

I just did a clean install of Jaunty Beta (9.04).
In the process I managed to do a few things that I would have done differently had I thought 
about it more.

So here are some tips to ease your fresh install:

1. When making backups to CD/DVD choose the option to save as a 'backup' - it preserves your file 
permissions (you will need them after the install).

2. After burning your backup CD/DVD's -- check them! Although I chose the 'copy hidden files' 
option, K3b didn't actually include them. I had to add them by dragging and dropping from Konqueror.

3. If you did burn your backup CD/DVD's without using the 'backup' option and you now find that 
all your files are read only -- just do a:
'find [YOURDIR] -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;' (without the quotes and replacing [YOURDIR] with 
the directory that you want to change the permissions on). This will recursively change the 
permissions on all files below the parent directory as rw r r (which is to give the owner 
read/write permissions and everybody else just read permissions).

4. Make sure that you have enabled all the necessary apt sources (repositories) before giving apt 
a list of all the apps that you had installed previously ('dpkg --get-selections > 
list-of-installed-packages').

5. Take some time to get used to KDE 4.2 if you are moving from 3.x as I did. It isn't so bad - 
just needs some time to adjust to new ways of doing things.....

6. Don't rush it! I spent several hours just preparing for the backup -- loads of old files to 
clear out, old emails (especially those space hoggers with attachments); and watch out for the 
.thumbnails and the .srtigi dirs -- they can be huge!

7. You are also going to need a few hours of quiet (no wife or kids - they always seem to bother 
you just when you need to do something really really important) to set up your new system to your 
liking.

Have fun....

Blessings,

Nigel

P.S. I love my wife and [5] children :-)