How to switch from Ubuntu to Lubuntu. Everything you need to know

The standard version of Ubuntu is a very complete operating system, but it must be acknowledged that it does not work equally well on all computers. If our computer is limited in resources, Unity is not the best graphical environment we could use. But what do we do if we have already installed Ubuntu on our PC, want to use a lightweight environment and do not want to lose our data? In this case, it is best to use a lighter distribution and it might be a good idea switch from Ubuntu to Lubuntu. In this guide we will teach you everything you need to know to get

How to switch from Ubuntu to Lubuntu without losing our data

Reinstalling the system

It wouldn’t be my favorite option, but it’s also not a bad choice to be the easiest. The process would be as follows:

1. We download the ISO image of Lubuntu. It is available from THIS LINK.
2. If we do not have it installed, we install UNetbootin by opening a terminal and typing the following command:

sudo apt-get install unetbootin

3. Once installed, we launched it by typing “UNetbootin” (without the quotes) in the Terminal.
4. You will be asked for your password. We introduce it.
5. In UNetbootin, select the ISO we downloaded in step 1 and the Pendrive where we will record it. If we prefer, we can download Lubuntu directly from UNetbootin, but I prefer to do so from the official page which assures me that I will download the latest version.
6. We click OK and it will start recording the image on the Pendrive.

7. Then we started from USB and we can follow the tutorial to install Lubuntu from THIS LINK, But in the type of installation we will choose “Reinstall Ubuntu”. This will keep the files in our personal folder.

We also have another option that I like more, but you need to take a few steps ahead. This is create three partitions for our system, which can be added to other partitions if we also have Windows installed. The three partitions will be for the root, one for swapping and another for our personal folder. To create the partitions we can use the tool GParted. Once we have the three partitions, when installing the new system we will choose “More options”.

When you have finished calculating the space of each partition, we will see an image like the following:

As you can see, I have a lot of partitions, but because I also have Windows installed so whatever can happen. What we need to do if we chose this method is look at the space of each partition. For example, if we have created a 100 GB partition for our personal folder, we will need to find the 102,400 MB partition, click “Change” and configure it as / home. The first time it will be empty, but if we reinstall the system and do not format this partition, the files in our personal folder will be available when we have just installed the new system.

The same thing we did with the folder we have to do with the swap partition and the root (/). The swap partition can be 1GB, it doesn’t have to be very large. By choosing this method we will only save our documents and not drag any errors we may have experienced.

Installing only the Lubuntu graphical environment

But if we want, we can also install only the graphical environment. There will be different ways to do this:

• installing the Lubuntu desktop without recommended applications, Which we will do by opening a terminal and typing the following command:

sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends lubuntu-desktop

• installing the entire Lubuntu desktop with the order:

sudo apt-get install lubuntu-desktop

From the Lubuntu Software Center we can remove applications that we will not use. If we want, we can remove the Lubuntu Software Center (I do not recommend it) with the following command:

sudo apt-get remove lubuntu-software-center

As I mentioned, my favorite method is to first create the partitions and then install the system using the created partitions. This is the method I usually use and once we do it a couple of times it costs nothing. What do you think is the best way to switch from Ubuntu to Lubuntu?