Migrating between Distros

[Duane Attaway]

On Sun, 14 Dec 2003, Jonathan Hutchins wrote:

> Has anyone done this?  Migrated a system from one Distro to another
> without just doing a clean rebuild?  What advice, warnings, or
> suggestiosn do you have for us?

Since we use the same filesystem, kernels, directory structures, about the
same init boot scripts, libraries, etc... running multiple distributions 
at the same time is indeed possible.  Problems that arise are contentions 
between libraries and inconsistancies between configuration files if 
versions of packages conflict.  When upgrading source based packages (aka 
gentoo) over binary, the quirks might include paths of the old binary 
package staying at the front.  Its enough to remind a person of Window's 
.dll hell.  If a person expects these quirks and is patient enough to 
manually remove the garbage, it works.

I used to have a mixed breed of Mandrake, Redhat, Slack, which slowly
morphed into a full Gentoo system.  Yes, it was messy, but it worked.  
Kind of like a pimped out, obnoxious car.  Loud, annoying, but it ran.  
Most of the time.  Uh huh.  This brings back fond memories, but I won't
repeat the experience!