[arch-general] new pc; keep arch installation?

[Nilesh Govindarajan]

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 7:28 PM, Jan de Groot <jan at jgc.homeip.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-05-25 at 15:46 +0200, Vincent Schut wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm going to get a new pc, replacing my now more than 5 years old pc. I
>> would like to keep my current arch installation, and hope to prevent the
>> need to do a full reinstall. I like the software I have, and I like the
>> configuration I have...
>>
>> Could I just put my old harddisk (which is relatively new and still OK,
>> I have SMART enabled) in the new pc and reboot?
>>
>> Both are amd 64 bit cpu's, the old one one of the first athlon 64's, the
>> new one a Phenom II X6 1035T (and my current arch linux install is 64bit)
>>
>> Of course stuff like chipset, network chip, video etc. are all
>> different. For video that would be no problem, I could install other
>> (current = nvidia, new pc = ati) drivers from the text console. However,
>> I'd like basic stuff and network to work :-)
>>
>> Could anyone give me an idea about the chance of luck for such an
>> operation? Tips, hints? Or would you just advise a clean install and
>> install and reconfigure all software again?
>
> Linux is not Windows, so you'll get away with it. You could put the
> harddisk in your new system and boot the new system with the fallback
> kernel option which includes an initramfs image with all drivers. You'll
> probably have to reconfigure X then.
> After booting the fallback kernel, it's advised to regenerate your
> initramfs images using mkinitcpio, or by just reinstalling kernel26.
>
> My Archlinux installation survived multiple mainboards and harddisks,
> it's years old by now.
>
>

+1
Linux Kernel determines which drivers to use at boot. Unlike Windows
which uses just the specified driver.

-- 
Nilesh Govindarajan
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