VirtualBox image to real installation, and vice versa

[Tippon]

I’m playing around with Ubuntu in VirtualBox to get an idea of whether I could permanently switch. If I wanted to move the virtual installation to a proper installation, could I use a backup program and restore to a physical drive? I imagine that Ubuntu would be able to sort out the drivers, but is there anything else that would mess it up (other than me ? ).

Alternatively, is there a way to run an installed Ubuntu through Windows? I’ve got a second drive, and I know it’s possible with the pen drive installations, but doing it with a proper installation would make it a lot easier to match up what I use in Windows to the Linux equivalents. I could install it to the pen drive rather than VirtualBox, but it’s a lot slower.

[Ed P]

Just copy your ‘Home’ files to a USB, the system files+programs are fairly independent but moving between virtual to real causes driver and other issues best taken care with a clean install which will only take minutes.

[Tippon]

Fair enough. I was hoping to avoid having to reinstall and set everything back up, but it will be good practice. Thanks Ed 🙂

[D-Dan]

Copying /home/$USER as Ed suggests will preserve most of your custom settings. If you really wanted to go for it, you could also copy /etc which has global settings, but honestly, half the fun is setting it up.

Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.

[D-Dan]

Gonna add to this. I just (today) installed MX Linux to my laptop. Previously Arch, but I dunno why, things were getting sluggish, and I was wanting to test MX in a real system (I have it in a VM) anyway, so here we go. I backed up ~/ first, and after install, copied it back.

It has, pretty much, got my familiar system back. There was some work needed to get some system level behaviour back, but by and large, just /home is enough to preserve an install. Of course, you’ll need to re-install software packages, but what the hell, that’s easy and free.

Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.

[Tippon]

Thanks Dan 🙂

I realised earlier that I’ve set up two VMs – one for Pi-hole and one for tinyMediaManager. I thought I’d used a snapshot to be able to roll back, but apparently I did both. I’m checking through my old Windows installation to make sure I’ve got all my passwords and random files, then I’ll have the SSD ready to wipe.

As I’ve got to reinstall at least one set of my programs anyway, I might try out some other distros on the actual hardware and see what I prefer. I’d switched to Ubuntu, as it seems to have the most support and ready made guides, but I’m still not getting on with the menu. I can’t decide whether to go for Mint or Ubuntu Studio, or maybe another option.

My pen drive distro has stopped working, so rather than mess around with something I rarely used, I’ll probably reinstall that too. It’s hardly ever used in anger, but I prefer to have it handy 🙂

[Ed P]

BTW – when copying Home files it is normally better to not copy the ‘hidden’ ones as these are often specific to the installation and may have some warts in it. The one exception is the Thunderbird files as it means no need to pfaff around setting up emails. I normally export the Firefox bookmarks on their own and import them to the new system.

I will also copy over my Conky setup but sometimes that does not work very well and I have to start again.

[Dave Rice]

Tippon, Ubuntu comes in many flavours of desktop manager https://itsfoss.com/which-ubuntu-install/ Xubuntu is Studio without the media apps.

Xfce is also the default desktop of Manjaro which you can run from a usb drive. It’s based on Arch and is #1 at DistroWatch.

Personally, most of my Linux is now virtual servers in the cloud but I do keep an Ubuntu virtual desktop going. I know what you mean about the new interface.

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