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ilovegentoo
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Joined: 05 Mar 2004
Posts: 64
Location: Joplin, Missouri USA
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 Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 6:22 pm Post subject: Moving From Linspire to Gentoo - Making A Smooth Transition? |
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About a year ago I was awarded a 1 year free membership with Linspire (Lindows) and my membership is up September 30th. As part of their "Click and Run" system I've downloaded a buttload of applications from HTML editors to Quake and Unreal Tournament for Linux.
Yesterday I succeeded in installing Gentoo for the tirst time with little difficulty and am presently running KDE. I like Gentoo so much that I do not want to consider renewing my membership with Linspire in 10 days.
Therefore, how can I move all of the installed applicatins from Linspire to Gentoo? I've heard this is fairly simple, but as a decade-long Winuser, all I keep thinking about are missing DLL files and the like... 
So, how do I go about moving all my programs from Linspire to Gentoo?
All help is very greatfully appreciated. |
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PowerFactor
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Joined: 30 Jan 2003
Posts: 1693
Location: out of it
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| Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 6:50 pm Post subject: |
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| Don't try to move the apps themselves over(unless it's something that's not avalable in portage), just copy the settings. Most of the settings for applications are probably in files and directories in your home directory. |
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ilovegentoo
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Joined: 05 Mar 2004
Posts: 64
Location: Joplin, Missouri USA
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| Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 7:03 pm Post subject: |
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| PowerFactor wrote: | | Don't try to move the apps themselves over(unless it's something that's not avalable in portage), just copy the settings. Most of the settings for applications are probably in files and directories in your home directory. |
I'm afraid I don't follow you. The Linspire box and Gentoo box are two different machines. If I just copy settings over, how then will I be able to use the apps on a different machine?
EDIT
Some of them are not available in portage. i.e. applications that cost me money to purchase. |
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PowerFactor
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Joined: 30 Jan 2003
Posts: 1693
Location: out of it
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| Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 7:51 pm Post subject: |
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If the apps are available in portage then install from portage and copy the settings over. I can't guarantee that will work 100% since some of the Linspire apps seem to be customized somewhat so they might have settings that aren't' applicable to the standard version.
Copying installed apps from one distro to another is tricky sometimes. You have to be sure the correct libraries are on the new system or the app won't work. And sometimes different glibc versions can cause problems. Also different distros put some system files in different locations.
But if the apps can be installed through portage or some other means then it might be worth a shot. Since linspire is debian based you should be able to use apt or dpkg to find the files that belong to the application. |
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ilovegentoo
n00b
Joined: 05 Mar 2004
Posts: 64
Location: Joplin, Missouri USA
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| Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 7:57 pm Post subject: |
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| I'll play around with it a bit. Most I believe I can get through portage actually. But a few I paid for like Crossover Office. Although, I guess I can install on Gentoo and use my purchased serial number... |
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PowerFactor
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Posts: 1693
Location: out of it
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| Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 8:08 pm Post subject: |
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| If you bought crossover office then you should be able to get it again from the codeweavers site. Unless you got it at a discount through some linspire deal. |
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ilovegentoo
n00b
Joined: 05 Mar 2004
Posts: 64
Location: Joplin, Missouri USA
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| Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:50 pm Post subject: |
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| PowerFactor wrote: | | If you bought crossover office then you should be able to get it again from the codeweavers site. Unless you got it at a discount through some linspire deal. |
That works. Just installed it. This may be a heck of a lot easier than I thought. Gentoo's portage system is excellent. |
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pablo_supertux
Advocate
Joined: 25 Jan 2004
Posts: 2935
Location: Somewhere between reality and Middle-Earth and in Freiburg (Germany)
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| Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2004 12:39 am Post subject: |
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| ilovegentoo wrote: | | PowerFactor wrote: | | Don't try to move the apps themselves over(unless it's something that's not avalable in portage), just copy the settings. Most of the settings for applications are probably in files and directories in your home directory. |
I'm afraid I don't follow you. The Linspire box and Gentoo box are two different machines. If I just copy settings over, how then will I be able to use the apps on a different machine?
EDIT
Some of them are not available in portage. i.e. applications that cost me money to purchase. |
If you copy the config files in your home directory, it will work, Linux doesn't have things like the windows registry where wired values must be set and things like that. Most of the normal application (and also KDE) create in your home directory a hidden file and/or a hidden directory in which the setting from every user are stored. In most cases those files/directories have the same name of the programm with the dot "." at the beginning. For example, the text editor vim has the configure file ~/.vimrc, kde has the directory ~/.kde oder ~/.kde3.2. The most linux programas search for those file and read the configuration, that's why copying this file is all you need to do.
You can make a buckup of your whole HOME directory and the use this when yoz#ur Gentoo installation is done. Copying the binaries is not a good idea, it is better that yor merge kde by yourself. Make emerge kde and wait (this takes a big time).
| ilovegentoo wrote: | | PowerFactor wrote: | | If you bought crossover office then you should be able to get it again from the codeweavers site. Unless you got it at a discount through some linspire deal. |
That works. Just installed it. This may be a heck of a lot easier than I thought. Gentoo's portage system is excellent. |
Yes, that's right. That's one of the reasosn why I changed to gentoo
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ilovegentoo
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Joined: 05 Mar 2004
Posts: 64
Location: Joplin, Missouri USA
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| Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2004 2:05 am Post subject: |
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| Thanks for all your help. |
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