Keep /home directory when installing Ubuntu 14.04

Keep the /home partition

Yes! You can keep the existing home partition using one of the advanced installation options called Something Else

After choosing this option, you will be able to tell the installation process to use the existing / and /home partitions.

• Make sure to choose to format / partition as ext4 and
• Not format (remove the check mark) the /home partition.

Keeping the users

Before you start the install process

From inside the Mageia installation, run the follwoing command:

cat /etc/passwd

This will give you the list of current usernames and user-numbers. Write the names and numbers down, as you will need them later when you recreate the users in Ubuntu. Thanks Arronical for the comment.

During installation

During Ubuntu you will be prompted to create the first user. This user will have sudo privileges. This user is internally identified as user number 1000. Assuming that Mageia uses the same convention, you should use the same username you had before. Ubuntu will setup to use your existing /home/username.

After installation

For all other users, you will have to wait till after the installation. See Why can't I click the button to add a new user? for details. If you create them in the same order as you did in Mageia, they will get user numbers in the same order as 1001, 1002, etc. Again, use the same usernames, and their existing home folders will be assigned to them. (You will be prompted to choose the existing folders or create new ones.)

Cleaning up

Note: your home folder /home/$USER contains your data as well as configuration files (your preferences) for the applications you use. These are kept in hidden folders with names starting with a dot (.). Since configurations in Mageia may not always match that in Ubuntu, you may get some errors when running an application for the first time. If this happens, you may need to delete the corresponding folder (or file) with dot in the the beginning. Alternately, you may want to delete all the hidden folders and files inside your home folder to get a fresh start in terms of application configuration.

Also see Changing to another distro: can the -home partition be kept?

Hope this helps