Mageia forum

I have an old laptop running Ubuntu 12.04. There is a / partition. /home is on a separate partition.

There is an administrator user with three other standard users.

I am planning to install Mageia over Ubuntu 12.04. I want to keep the same usernames.

Will it be OK if while installing Mageia, I give the same username and password for the administrator account, log-in and then create other users?

If not, can you suggest some other/ safer method?

Hello,
It should be ok.
You will probably need to format the / partition, but keep the /home.
After it is installed go into Mageia Control centre > System and manage users on system. Give them a password.
The root password will need to given as it is installed, as the /etc directory will get wiped out.

Well, you are going from a Debian based distro to a Redhat based distro, and the differences between the two families are more than skin deep.

I suggest you keep the contents of /etc from the Ubuntu install and judiciously apply those contents to the Mageia install after it is completed. Moving passwd, shadow, and group should get you all your users and groups back, though I haven't done much with recent versions of Ubuntu and they might have moved some things around. You also should find that having your old /etc available will go a long way toward getting your new system configured quickly.

@jim18
IMHO I think this a bad, hard way to do it.
I have had 2 versions of Mandriva & 3 versions of Mageia with the same /home directories.
stat /home/username will tell you Gid and Uid.
the Mageia control centre picks it up.