{"id":214565,"date":"2026-02-17T12:48:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T17:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/17\/how-to-switch-linux-distros-and-retain-all-of-your-data\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T13:15:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T18:15:08","slug":"how-to-switch-linux-distros-and-retain-all-of-your-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/17\/how-to-switch-linux-distros-and-retain-all-of-your-data\/","title":{"rendered":"How to switch Linux distros and retain all of your data"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/how-to-switch-linux-distros-and-retain-all-of-your-data\/\">How to switch Linux distros and retain all of your data<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/how-to-switch-linux-distros-and-retain-all-of-your-data\/\">https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/how-to-switch-linux-distros-and-retain-all-of-your-data\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-02-17 12:48:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.zdnet.com\">www.zdnet.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>    <span class=\"c-shortcodeImage_credit g-outer-spacing-top-xsmall u-block\">Jack Wallen \/ Elyse Betters Picaro \/ ZDNET<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>ZDNET key takeaways<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Hopping to a different distro doesn&#8217;t mean you have to lose data.<\/li>\n<li>There are three possible options for you to try.<\/li>\n<li>Make sure to test these before you do it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Are you feeling that eternal pull to jump to a different Linux distribution? It happens. I&#8217;ve gone through that experience so many times that I&#8217;ve lost count.<\/p>\n<p>Migrating from one distribution to another isn&#8217;t all that hard\u2026 Unless you want to retain all of the data within your home directory (or any directory, for that matter). If you don&#8217;t do something to save that data, you will lose out and have to start all over.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>You don&#8217;t want that (unless you have nothing of importance in your home directory).<\/p>\n<p>What you can do depends on your setup and needs.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Also: <\/strong><strong>5 command line backup tools every Linux user should use for desktops and servers<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Let me explain.<\/p>\n<h2>The best way to switch distributions and keep your data<\/h2>\n<p>Linux is so well designed, that you can install the operating system in such a way that your home directory can be easily migrated from one distribution to another.<\/p>\n<p>How you do this is partition the distribution in such a way that your home directory is on a separate partition from the OS.<\/p>\n<p>Sounds difficult, right? It&#8217;s really not.<\/p>\n<p>Let me show you the basics of how this is done, demonstrating on the latest release of Ubuntu. Before you even start the installation, you should either make sure there&#8217;s a second disk in your machine or connect an external SSD (with a cable fast enough to handle data transmission). To do this, walk through the installation as you normally would, until you reach the Disk Setup section of the installation.<\/p>\n<p>When you&#8217;re presented with the two routes of setting up your disk, select &#8220;Manual installation.&#8221; In the resulting window, you should see your drive listed. If you have a secondary drive, it should be listed as well.<\/p>\n<p>Select the secondary disk and then click +. When prompted, configure the size you want to use for the \/home&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/how-to-switch-linux-distros-and-retain-all-of-your-data\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How to switch Linux distros and retain all of your data https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/how-to-switch-linux-distros-and-retain-all-of-your-data\/ Publish Date: 2026-02-17&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":214566,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/a\/img\/resize\/bc95c6f7b60658942c479c3906722026cb96a807\/2026\/02\/05\/4234564d-f8cf-441f-9fd0-3507ae42b9dc\/linux-mint-vs-zorin-os.jpg?auto=webp&fit=crop&height=675&width=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[71,110,79,167],"class_list":["post-214565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux","tag-linux","tag-linux-mint","tag-ubuntu","tag-zorin-os"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214565"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214565"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":214567,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214565\/revisions\/214567"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}