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Switching distro without loosing data in /home (lemm.ee)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by areyouevenreal@lemm.ee to c/linuxquestions@lemmy.zip

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Is there a way to move distro without loosing data in /home? I am currently running Pop OS and want to move to Nix OS while keeping the data. Normally I could use an external hard drive or my server, but most of my equipment is in storage at the moment. Current partition setup is using LUKS and LVM with ext4. I am guessing there is a way to manipulate the LVM to make it work by adding another partition and installing into it.

I know this is probably a convoluted idea. I am trying to avoid spending money an another external drive.

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[–] h3ndrik@feddit.de 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Sure. I think with LVM you have decoupled your partitions from their physical location on the disk. You could shrink and move logical volumes around, make some (free) space for a new one and install a new distro on it. Or just replace the PopOs root with a new operating system.

As I remember it's not super easy but there are quite some wiki articles about LVM and guides on how to shrink/change LVM volumes including the filesystem inside. LUKS+LVM+ext4 is a pretty common scenario.

However... Having a Backup of important data is always a good idea. Especially when playing around with partitions and filesystems. And more so if you don't exactly know what you're doing.