I've had Ubuntu for about half a year now, and I am considering switching to Zorin 7. Is there an easy way to switch, while keeping my files and programs?

Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

You will have to save all your files into an external device, like a external hard drive, I am not sure of a easy way to save the settings of your favorite apps like web browser book marks and email contacts and appointment in your calendar. I guess you could copy the entire home directory into your external.

So for the installation of Zorin make sure you partition your hard drive so you dont have the same problem if you choose to go with a different distro.

Do this : Make a root partition of 15 GB and select / as the mount point and format as ext4. Make a partition of 2 GB for swap then the rest leave it for home and the mount point will be /home and format it as ext4 or ext3.

If you want to go with a different OS in the future you will tell the installer to replace / with the root for the new OS, and tell the installer no to format /home.

good luck to you

1 members found this post helpful.

That's a lot of helpful information. Thanks.

Most browsers and email clients offer a way to export contacts and bookmarks. Generally, exporting bookmarks in HTML format, if it's available, is most easily portable.

See the docs or the websites for your browser, email client, RSS reader, and other such applications for their particular options; or google something like "export contacts/bookmarks/feedlist Thunderbird/Sylpheed/Firefox/etc." for the applications in question.

Never used Zorin, so I can't comment on it.