In July 2019, Buster became the stable release of Debian and the Bullseye became de facto the new testing distribution. After spending almost 2 years on Buster, I decided last week that it was time to migrate to Bullseye.

Backing up

I frequently backup my files (so far with a simple bash function that copies them to my external hard drive). Plus, I also have a repository, dotfiles, where I stored my configuration files (the ones I can share). Before the migration, I created a separate backup with my regular files and as many configuration files as possible (for instance I backed up my .local folder). For this migration, I was eager to learn how to backup my GNOME keybindings as well as the GNOME terminal profiles I used. Turned out I only needed one command: dconf see this page on developer.gnome.org that I used as follows:

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dconf dump /org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/ > config/gnome-terminal-profiles.dconf.bak
dconf dump /org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/ > config/media-keys-keybindings.dconf.bak

Note that in order to restore my keybindings and my profile, I need to call load instead of dump, like so:

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dconf load /org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/ < config/gnome-terminal-profiles.dconf.bak
dconf load /org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/ < config/media-keys-keybindings.dconf.bak

Creating a bootable USB stick

After I ensured that all I needed was safely stored in a external drive, I created a bootable USB stick. I first downloaded the last Debian testing image and as I opted for .iso image I unmounted the stick and copied this image to the stick (as explained on the official website):

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cp debian.iso /dev/sda && sync

Then I rebooted my machine and pressed F12 on startup (I own a Lenovo ThinkPad T470p) to display the list of devices and access the installation disk and I went through all the steps to complete the installation of Bullseye (which is relatively quick).

Setting up the set of software I frequently use

Once Debian Buster was installed, I first edited /etc/apt/sources.list in super user mode (su):

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# my sources.list file
## Canada mirror 
deb http://ftp.ca.debian.org/debian/ bullseye main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.ca.debian.org/debian/ bullseye main contrib non-free

## security updates 
deb http://security.debian.org/ bullseye-security main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ bullseye-security main contrib non-free

Then I went thought the following steps to install all the software I needed and then I copied my files.

Current system

Below is a description of my current system, i.e. what was installed during the process described above.

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$ inxi -S
System:    Host: debkev Kernel: 5.7.0-3-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: GNOME 3.36.6 
           Distro: Debian GNU/Linux bullseye/sid