Linux Mint 32bit is dead. Long live Debian 32bit
1) Remove mint specific packages but not
mint-common/mintsources/mint-translations, those try to remove gdebi,
and say "potentially harmful"...
2) Remove un-needed stuff, libreoffice/nvidia-prime-applet/hexchat/transmission-gtk/thunderbird/firefox?/etc.
3) Check for other mint-only/ubuntu-only package with something like: https://pkgs.org/search/?q=mintreport search for mint specific packages with apt list --installed | grep tricia, can do the same thing with ubuntu packages https://pkgs.org/search/?q=kerneloops.
add debian to sources.list.d/ https://wiki.debian.org/SourcesList
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye main contrib non-free deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye main contrib non-free deb http://deb.debian.org/debian-security/ bullseye-security main contrib non-free deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian-security/ bullseye-security main contrib non-free deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye-updates main contrib non-free deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye-updates main contrib non-free
obtain debian keys (I copied from debian install)
cp trusted.gpg.d/debian-archive-* /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/
remove ubuntu/mint sources
sudo mv /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list{,.bak}
sudo apt updateWe get a new section in synaptic "Installed (local or obsolete)". Some of them can be "Packages menu => Force Version (ctrl-E)" to switch from mint to debian. like:
- base-files
Others need similar sounding replacements:like
- iso-flag-png -> iso-flags-png-320x240 or iso-flags-svg (idk maybe remove that one? I'm not sure why it was marked as manual install)
- linux-kernel-generic 5.0.0-32 -> linux-image-686 -- version 5.10.46-5 (thats a whole 0.10.45-27 better)
Some things will just get handled by:
sudo apt upgrade
1212 upgraded, 209 newly installed, 0 to remove and 289 not upgraded
Need to get 659 MB of archives.
After this operation, 784 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue[Y/n] ^C
or since "the following packages have been kept back" is large (https://askubuntu.com/questions/601/the-following-packages-have-been-kept-back-why-and-how-do-i-solve-it):
sudo apt --with-new-pkgs upgrade1212 upgraded, 209 newly installed, 0 to remove and 289 not upgraded
Need to get 659 MB of archives.
After this operation, 784 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue[Y/n] ^C
or since that didn't change anything:
sudo apt dist-upgrade1499 upgraded, 457 newly installed, 55 to remove and 1 not upgraded
Need to get 1,027 MB of archives.
After this operation, 1,221 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue[Y/n] y
Watch a bunch of:dpkg: ...: dependency problems, but removing anyways as you requested
perl-modules-5.26
libperl5.26 depends on perl-modules
perl depends on perl-modules5.26
libsensors4
libsnmp30 depends on libsensors4
aptitude depends on libapt-pkg5.0 (probably delete aptitude)
...
python-apt depends on ... (probably delete I'm not sure why it was top level?)
ubuntu-advantage-tools ... (probably should have deleted before starting)
unable to delete "/var/lib/initramfs-tools" not empty
python-samba depends on python-tdb
python-samba depends on libldb1
python-ldb depends on liblbd1
python depends on libpythonstdlib
python depends on python-minimal
xed-common depends on python
... million thing depend on python
python-xdg
python-psutils
python-gtk2
python-goobject-2
python-glade2
python-dbus
python-crypto
python-cairo
nslcd-utils
gir1.2-xapp-1.0
compizconfig-settings-manager
/etc/depmods.d not empty
/etc/polkit-1/nullbackend.conf.d not empty
/etc/calendar not empty
compiz-gnome depends on gnome-settings-daemon-schemas
/etc/resolveconf/update-libc.d not empty
/etc/resolveconf not empty
/etc/bash_completion.d not empty
considering deconfiguration of manpages-dev which would be broken by installation of manpages
...
de-configuration manpages-dev
/etc/apparmor.d.cache not empty
/etc/cryptsetup-initramfs not empty
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/openoffice not empty
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi not empty
trying to overwrite /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgstbasecamerabinsrc-1.0 which is also in package libgstreamer-plugins-good1.0.0:i386 1.14.5-0ubuntu!18.04.2
/etc/apt/event.d not empty
/var/log/lightdm not empty
/var/lib/lightdm-data not empty
/var/cache/lightdm not empty
/etc/neofetch not empty
Errors were encountered while processing
/tmp/apt-dpkg-install-.../###-libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-0...
I think I don't need any of the things with the dependency issues, Autoremove removes most/all of them, I think, and also removes gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad(which threw the error), but also has more depends issues:
man-db depends on bsdextrautils | bsdmaiutils
I also ignored: error in firmware-linux-firemware-free tyring to overwrite /lib/firmware/av7110/bootcode.bin which is also in linux-firmware
Can always mark packages for re-install.
The rest of the leftovers in "Installed (Local or Obsolete)", IDK delete? Except for the ones that show "also marked for removal" of things that are actually useful (I think I want to keep apt, xfwm4, etc), switch those versions to debian sources. Maybe mark as "automatically installed" too.
Check "Installed (Manual)". there seem to be a lot of manually installed lib*. Compare against fresh debian install? Default install has about 200 manually installed packages. Upgraded has
>550. apt-mark showmanual differs slightly from synaptic "Installed
(manual)" (shows about 30 fewer in synaptic). or just mark as "automatically installed", and see what is actually a dependency. It seems weird that anything titled "lib*" would be manually installed anyway, but they exist in default install (about 100).
Re-add missing firmware-non-free realtek (for r8169).
Now running at about 90 "manually" installed packages. Works fine <fingers crossed>.
✔Success? Firefox seems faster in the Mint to Debian install, over the clean install? Either the pae kernel is slowing it down, or there is some extra/missing package. 🤷♂️
