I’ve got a new Lenovo that shipped with Ubuntu 20.04 on it and I’m wondering if there’s a way to add all the awesomeness of Ubuntu Budgie to it without reinstalling from scratch.
Thanks! I really appreciate it.
To be honest reinstalling from scratch is a cleaner solution.
Just backup from /home/$USER
⋅ your whole visible personal data
⋅ some hidden config’ files and folders, only for your most used and favorite programs ( generally from ~/.my_app/
, ~/.config/my_app/
, ~/.local/share/my_app/
and ~/.cache/my_app/
)
Adding many desktop environments to one ×buntu installation is not without risks in the long run. Especially if you use those many DE from one and only one same $USER
→ this is the « best » way to ruin config’s of each installed DE…
×buntu are not really conceived with multi DE in mind. Hence the variants / flavors which fully integrate each a DE.
If you don’t want or can not fully re-install the system, be sure to dedicate a new user for the newly installed DE.
From your usual default Ubuntu create a new admin user. Then log out from this session.
On the login screen, switch to the new user, and for that new user, choose the budgie-desktop session.
From now on, always use the new user with budgie-desktop AND always use « older » user with ubuntu-desktop. NEVER mix users / sessions.
That should prevent most mismatch in DE’s config ( which are stored in the hidden files and folders of each respective /home/$USER
)
An other option is installing another OS besides actual one, in its own partition of disc ( dual or multi boot ). Then at boot of the machine you’ll be able to choose which OS to launch.
Yeah, I can already see it’s going to be worth doing a fresh install. Things like scaling and some theming are off after adding the second DE.