Re: Microsoft Still Trying To Turn Dimdows Into Linux

On 2025-05-29 02:35, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Wed, 28 May 2025 20:26:37 -0400, Paul wrote:
 

This kind of maintenance was already being done on Windows.

 Obviously not, otherwise Microsoft would not be making such a big deal out
of it being some new feature.
 

Does Linux have a Repair Install, where your programs and data files
are untouched, while the OS automatically refreshes ?

It depends on the distro, and both the choices you made when originally installing, and choices you make when re-installing.  Ubuntu, probably more generally Debian, based distros allow you to make choices to install different parts on different partitions when installing.  My usual choice is to install root '/' on a clean newly-formatted partition, but /home is installed on a separate partition which is NOT formatted, thus allowing me to preserve my user data between distros. This is the procedure I would follow to achieve this, using an XUbuntu22 USB stick as an example ...
1)    Boot from the USB and choose Install, though you can choose Try and later Install from the Desktop icon.
2)    Set the region/language
3)    Make your own choices regarding installation size, downloading updates for the installation, and 3rd party software.  I tend to select the latter as I've found sometimes that certain media files won't play.
CRITICAL SECTION!
4)    Dialog entitled 'Installation Type', this is where you choose to let Linux make all the decisions, or take control, and you need to do the latter.
You must choose 'Something else'.  A gparted-style partitioning window appears.  Select the disk and partition for the root installation, and click 'Change' underneath the table, and you get to a dialogue entitled 'Edit the partition'.  Change 'Use as' to ext4, optionally choose to format the partition if it contains unwanted old files, and choose '/' as the 'Mount point'.  Click OK.
It's possible that at this point a confirmation dialog may come up: 'Write the previous changes to the disk and continue?', if so, not yet, choose 'Go back'
Repeat the above for the data or home partition, but this time choosing '/home' as the 'Mount point'.  If already you have data on it, then you will most probably want to choose NOT to format it, though be aware that if, later in the installation, you choose a pre-existing username, that user profile may get overwritten with possible loss of pre-existing data.
If the 'Write the previous changes ...' appears now, choose 'Continue', otherwise choose Install under the partition table and it will then appear.
END OF CRITICAL SECTION!
5)    From now on install as normal, the next stage is choosing the Time Zone.

That’s the only kind of “install” there is.

In view of the above, I think this reply is at best somewhat ambiguous and unhelpful, and at worst potentially somewhat misleading.
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