The Linux Ship of Theseus
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pick any distro and install it.
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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.
EDIT: Some clarification on some of the clever tools brought up here:
chroot, dd, debootstrap, and partition editors that allow you to install the new system in an empty container or blanket-overwrite the old system go against the spirit of this challenge.
These are very useful and valid tools under a normal context and I strongly recommend learning them.
You can use them if you prefer, but The ship of Theseus was replaced one board at a time. We are trying to avoid dropping a new ship in the harbor and tugging the old one out.
It may however be a good idea to use them to test out the target system in a safe environment as you perform the migration back in the real root, so you have a reference to go by.
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.
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May, I introduce you to bedrock
Ummm you go first.
Love the idea of the challenge, my issue would be lack of a validator tool to confirm I’d completed the challenge - any suggestions?
The compiled distros should be easy instead of nightmare tbh
This is what I was doing with my server. I’ve learned there’s no better feeling than starting from scratch.
Theoretically one could also prohibit rebooting.
IIRC
kexecis pivot_root but for the kernel.So, any distro to any other distro?
- Installs Fedora Silverblue
- Rebases to Bazzite
Jobs done chief!
installs ubuntu, converts to mint. bam.
The beauty of this exercise is you can make it as easy or challenging as you want just by changing the targets, and finding different combinations can keep things interesting.
kid named nixos-infect:
I would watch a YouTube series doing this
whoever runs the channel will singlehandedly cause a worldwide antidepressant shortage
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.
Love him. His lego island port has been a pleasure to watch.
Oh he’s the Lego Island guy, I thought he sounded familiar.
Hell: from macOS to WSL.
But the rules say the system must be usable.
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” 😂
Reminds me of trying NsCDE… it changed a ton of settings and no other desktop looked right after that. I ended just blowing away my home folder and restoring my files
New Game+: speedrun it
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.
Reminds me of a recent post someone converted their system from Debian to OpenBSD via SSH only
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.
