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Say I want to migrate from Ubuntu to Debian, or the other way around, how can I reinstall all of my apps on my new system? For config it is super simple, just back up the home folder, but is there an easy way to reinstall all of your apps/software on the new system in an automated and simple manner?

Thanks

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  • Thanks. I am aware of that but it is a very old discussion (4-6 years old) and I was wondering if anything new came up that makes it easier. Like a plugin for the software center to simply read the installed apps and save that somehow.
    – Tio TROM
    Sep 12, 2018 at 22:12
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    The debian packaging system was created in 1994, and beneath software centre (which is often modified and thus unique to a distribution, let alone different on the same distribution but for a different desktop) on both Debian and Ubuntu is that old dpkg/apt packaging which the post reports on. Further that method works regardless of DEsktop, and any nice 'easy' GUI tool would be specific to a specific desktop, or look ugly or drag in a huge amount of resources (libs) on different environments making its use costly. Thus I can't imagine anyone creating what you'd want.
    – guiverc
    Sep 12, 2018 at 22:38

1 Answer 1

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Use a config manager. There are plenty of them around. The two that would be easier for you to use are saltstack, or Ansible. The latter is easiest. You can setup a playbook to install and configure all your installed software. See here for a how to.

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  • You might want to consider expanding your answer and posting it on the duplicate candidate that has ~600 up-votes.
    – WinEunuuchs2Unix
    Sep 13, 2018 at 0:58

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