In my previous post about Keryx, I had mentioned there are 3 different ways to bring .debs from another system to your own, but I skipped explaining APTonCD because
- those packages need to be installed on another Ubuntu system,
- that system must be running the same release of ubuntu as yours, and
- it gives an output of an iso file or has to be written to CD.
This makes it non-ideal for bringing specific packages from one system to another system.
APTonCD though is the perfect tool. When you want to reinstall your OS for some reason (like playing with it too much that it does not work), APTonCD is the tool to use. It’s fairly straightforward. Once installed just run it from System > Administration > APTonCD. Click on create and all the applications installed will be listed out. Then click on Burn, and viola all the packages that you’ve installed gets backed up onto a CD, DVD, or ISO.
After reinstalling the OS, pop the CD or DVD that was burned earlier into the CD drive, run APTonCD (install it first), and click restore. Now all the .debs will be copied to apt cache. Now go to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager and go to Edit > Add CD-ROM. Then click on Origin in the bottom left and all those packages will be listed and can be added.
All the applications installed will be restored. If like me, you have /home on a separate partition, not much configuration required either.
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