The Linux Ship of Theseus

  1. pick any distro and install it.

  2. Then, without installing another distro over the top of it, slowly convert it into another distro by replacing package managers, installed packages, and configurations.

System must be usable and fully native to the new distro (all old packages replaced with new ones).

No flatpaks, avoid snaps where physically possible, native packages only.

Easy: pick two similar distros, such as Ubuntu and Debian or Manjaro and Arch and go from the base to the derivative.

Medium: Same as easy but go from the derivative to the base.

Hard: Pick two disparate distros like Debian and Artix and go from one to the other.

Nightmare: Make a self-compiled distro your target.

    • sasquash@sopuli.xyz
      4·
      2 months ago

      Reminds me of MattKC, a guy on YouTube who does similar stuff. He ported the .Net framework to win95. very interesting videos, if think this challenge would be exactly his type.

    • merthyr1831@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      Not quite the same but you might like the Linux from Nothing series, building out a Linux install from first principles.

      Obviously lots of linux youtubers have done videos on linux from scratch too but the step by step nature is pretty enjoyable to watch.

  • Jonathan@lemmy.world
    18·
    2 months ago

    “Medium: Same as easy but go from the derivative to the base.”

    I can’t quite recall, but I think I did exactly that with Ubuntu -> Debian once upon a time. I think Ubuntu was only a year or so old though, so there wasn’t a huge amount of divergence back then. As a bonus anecdote I also attempted a semi-successful build of Gentoo on a PPC Mac around the same time (nothing before or after that has compared in its level of nightmare).

    • StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      4·
      2 months ago

      I also attempted a semi-successful build of Gentoo on a PPC Mac around the same time (nothing before or after that has compared in its level of nightmare).

      Amen!

  • Overspark@feddit.nl
    8·
    2 months ago

    I once switched from Debian i386 to amd64 in-place. That was MUCH harder than you would expect, I guess somewhere between medium and hard in your list. That server is still running that install btw, so in the end it all worked out.

  • villainy@lemmy.world
    7·
    2 months ago

    I have seen dozens of systems migrated from Gentoo to CentOS by live swapping the userspace and eventually rebooting into the new kernel. A hair raising experience to be sure.

  • Go-On-A-Steam-Train@lemmy.ml
    6·
    2 months ago

    I “broke” linux mint just by trying to pop KDE on, had to timeshift because it messed up my keyboard layout and a whole bunch of other things with my display.

    I don’t know how people do these crazy changes without pain, and have a feeling the answer is simply “there’s pain” 😂

  • steeznson@lemmy.world
    5·
    2 months ago

    It is quite easy to go slackware -> gentoo from what I remember but minimalist distros might be cheating

    • Semperverus@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      This goes against the spirit of the challenge, but as its a singleplayer game (unless you bring friends and SSH!) you can definitely choose to allow dd, chroot, and similar tools

      • NSRXN@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        1·
        2 months ago

        it is pretty terrifying to debootstrap over ssh. constantly checking that you’re on the correct system, and using the chrooted terminal. it’s like a high wire act. at least the first few times.

  • sntx@lemm.ee
    2·
    2 months ago

    Shouldn’t everyone that installed Arch the right way be able to do it on most distros, simply after installing Pacman?

    Though I think changing (shrink, create new, migrate, delete old) the partition layout would count as installing another distro on top…

    Want a challange? Start with something like Silverblue.

    • swab148@lemm.ee
      2·
      2 months ago

      Arch already has apt in the repo, so I’d imagine it’s not super hard to build your own Debian from there.

  • d_k_bo@feddit.org
    2·
    2 months ago

    I think it would be very interesting to convert e.g. a regular Fedora installation into a (so-called “immutable”) Fedora Silverblue installation or vice-versa.

  • N0x0n@lemmy.ml
    21·
    2 months ago

    Is that even possible? I’m already in panic when I remove a package and it’s dependencies with pacman 😅.

    Sure I did replaced Thunar with Nemo, but a few things don’t work exactly how it should, like opening the download directory from Firefox (Known issue BTW) even though all mime-types are correctly set !

    Even switching from Alternative -> Base distro seems like a really difficult task :/