Installer betatesting: migration mode, trying known distros

The migration mode is unique in Elive, no any other distro has this, so is a very good thing to promote, but is not very well tested.

Do you feel motivated for do some betatesting of this feature? - help-needed -

How to proceed:

  1. download one of the "most used" distro iso (let's say: mint, manjaro, pop, etc...)
  2. run it on a VirtualBox and install it on the HD
  3. make a "snapshot" (VirtualBox) when the system is ready
  4. boot in Elive, install using migration mode
  5. check your elive installed system, play with things in order to discover if there's any bug anywhere
    1. for example, originally the ubuntu system doesn't include a password for root, but the elive installer was improved by asking for this if ubuntu is detected (it is always detected?)
    2. if there's bugs, reports them on this thread so that the installer can be improved to make it always compatible and working by default
      1. on such case, do not delete the previous snapshot, so we will need to recover the virtual machine to a previous state (when the other distro was successfully installed) to run again an updated eliveinstaller and verify that the bug was solved
  6. after a successful test, you can restore the snapshot, delete the snapshot, and install another known-distro to betatest
    1. you can also create a duplicate of this virtual machine to save this distro, it can be useful for you to play or to do future betatestings or just add it as an attached HD into the other virtual machines, making it a multi-multi-booting system with many distros listed on grub

All the tests I've run (very recently my wife's Ubuntu 1804, Transgrading Ubuntu 18.04 to Elive 3.8.24) turned out very nice indeed with a minimum of fuss.

Not because I thought of it but .......
Transgrading is a totally unused word where 'migration' is used quite a lot for different things like copying over stuff.... so why not use that or Elive-transgrade seeing it's unique anyway.

The only thing is that:

  1. Ubuntu and others don't have a file like Evil with apps to keep installed.
    So either we warn about this "issue" or we try to read (maybe from the xdg-menu) what files are actually installed and add those for a 2nd stage of the install.

  2. Flatpacks can cause [problems if heavily used OTOH they are user induced issues, ultimately.

  3. AFAIK Elive runs fine without a root user like any other Debian based distro. It's not only Ubuntu based distros that do this. I think it was Lindows that started this trend IIRC.

anything to improve from the installer ? :slight_smile:

"migration" is moving from one to the other (which makes perfectly sense to what it does), transgrading is a complex word that not many people know what exactly means, i think that using a complex word (or more like a word that not many people understand) is not a good thing because then they don't know what they are doing / what they want, in fact i just translated it to Spanish and it translates it with the same word but i never seen / used that word before in my life, "migration" keeps the concept simple and people can understand better what they are doing IMHO

sorry, I don't know what you are talking about :thinking: but I think you mean the user needs to be notified about "differences from X to elive?" i think the best for that is to open them a web link with a howto here with all the things wanted listed

they can give many kind issues and is not recommended by many reason, keeping them "being able to work" in elive is a good thing but these features are not enabled nor included by default (you need to install extra packages), it is more like a little offtopic for the installation and the elive system in general, i think the best is to just have a well-titled howto on this forum so that users can find it when searching on google "how to install flatpack on elive" and then explaining on it "how" but also "why it is not suggested"

BTW recently @PrinceAMD had an issue installing Elive together a Manjaro system in an EFI boot system (if somebody can betatest that could be nice), so i have implemented in Elive a detection for cases where "EFI mode + more than one OS installed" to suggest installing refind as a boot manager which will improve the booting of each operating system correctly

Which was exactly why I'm against the term 'migration' being used here. You said yourself that this was a feature unique to Elive ..... so why use a term that is already in use elsewhere and defines moving personal data and configurations from one machine or OS to another.

  • I proposed a unique term for a unique feature for which, rightly no translation is to be found (yet)

This Elive feature is different in the sense that it transforms an existing (Debian based OS) to Elive which is of course an upgrade in every sense. :w00t: and includes migrating the user data....the latter is something that most other OSes do quite easily due to the habit of having a separate '/home' partition.

Your memory is failing you ..... I've coined the phrase a few times before albeit I've admittedly used crossgrading as a term too for the same feature.

  • Maybe crossgrading has a nicer ring to it. :thinking: Let's use that one then. :smiley_cat:

How can people understand a feature they've never heard of before? Using 'migration' would only confuse them IMO, because that's something different.

No, not really.
I was referring to the '/etc/elive/packages_to_maintain_installed' file that other OSes obviously will not have. So I was thinking of ways to acquire some oversight as to what is installed on the OS to be crossgraded and whether Elive has those apps available too.

It's always good to have Howtos but they're not some magic solution to lacking self-explanatory info.

As to flatpacks: I was merely trying to point out that they're being used more and more and could cause problems for crossgrading.

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hum, then I think it should be used for the promotion of the feature (but not in the interface, the interface / GUI needs to be simple and clear), for example in the newsletter that talks about the feature or the website future Features section which will describe the unique installer features

hum! now with the description I understand the meaning of the word lol, I also like more the word "transform" itself, it sounds simple to understand "what it does" actually (so transform can be used in the GUI because is easy to understand and more clear than migration, as you explained the 'common' meaning of it on other distros)

Hello!

Once upon a time, I spoke about an alternative to the use of "migration" word...
:sweat_smile:

Salutations!

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Hi!

'was: "morphing"...
So what about "morphgrade", or "morphing" from X to Elive?
It's very much appropriate vocabulary and describe exactly the operation...
Isn't it?

Ih!

Hmm, I like morphing too.
It has a sort of "softer" or more "gentler" feel to it but actually means gradually replacing or changing.... and this mode is in fact a 'one-shot' action, nothing gradual about it.

I wouldn't use 'morphgrading' it's weird and but 'morphing' might be useful, one day. :thinking: but then so is 'transgrading' ..... to me 'crossgrading'and 'transforming' is the best solution.

Hello!

I prefer morphing too;
Crossgrading is nice and as a "new" term, perhaps well designed for what we speak about and wanna made understand..?

Salutations!

transforming sounds like the most simplest word to make people understand, but it may not be used as a definition itself (select a mode: upgrade, transforming, etc...) but instead as a part of the description? hum

after to think a bit, the original migration word meaning doesn't sounds bad too, its something like "pack your things and move to something better"

I do like "morphing".

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Hello!

Perhaps an other one, coming from music, but that could fit nicely for present concern: Transposing, or transpose...
Means, for music, change score for different instrument(s) or range, key...

Salutations!