On Wed, 2009-02-04 at 13:10 +0000, samwise wrote:
How well would Linux cope if I swapped out the guts of the PC like this? I appreciate I'd have to update X to use the correct drivers for the new graphics card, but I'm not sure about the on-board sound card. That was auto-recognised on install, so is it likely to be detected if the mainboard is changed? Perhaps also worth mentioning that I selected to encrypt my OS hard drive when I installed it.
Mostly unless you have something exotic going on in the Drive controller department it will just work..later builds of X run pretty much configless as well so you might not even have to reconfigure X.
Sound should be autodetected but if not there are ways of prodding alsa to make it happen
I have done it a few times...once to install Xubuntu on my old sub notebook which didn't have a CD rom and couldn't boot from USB or Netboot and once when changing machines whilst feeling as lazy as you :)
The other approach is that given most of your configuration will be living in /etc or .files in your home dir..Just get dpkg to dump a list of installed packages and feed that into apt-get when you have reinstalled after you have copied over /etc and your home dir(s). If you are going to the same version of the same distro that should be fine(ish).
Of course if you have been installing from source or tinkering lots with other bits then it might not work out so well.
Generally I take the opportunity for a fresh installation and just copy over /home at the 3 year point when I change machines. Linux doesn't suffer bit rot the same way windows does but my brain when remembering what I have done to a machine in the past does and rebuilding the config how I like it every 3 years refreshes stuff in my mind.