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I recently gave my laptop to someone who seriously needed one but I don't know how to assign their name and password to the computer, it is still under my name and password and still has all my old information and I wonder, is there any way I could revert it to a factory mode of a sort?
My laptop is a 64-bit Ubuntu 14.04.

bummi
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Lea
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2 Answers2

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As far as I know, there is no option to factory reset Ubuntu.

You can simply reinstall Ubuntu 14.04 over top of the current installation, if you aren't terribly worried about data security. The data will be overwritten, so unless your friend really really wants your data, they won't be able to access it.

Just get the laptop, boot up the LiveDVD/LiveUSB you used to previously install Ubuntu and reinstall - setting up their choice of username and password! It won't take terribly long (depending on whether you use a LiveUSB or LiveDVD and the internet connection speed) and is probably the easiest choice for resetting to factory defaults.

RPiAwesomeness
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You mean just add a new user, then delete your old user & home?

There's probably a "users" GUI application that can add a new user, or just log in with your old user, and in a terminal do a 

sudo adduser newusername
  • May need to add the new user to a sudo group, &/or edit /etc/sudoers or a file in /etc/sudoers.d/ to allow the new user to use sudo. (Could just change instances of yourolduser into newuser...)
  • And probably add groups (change user permissions in the old Users & Groups GUI) to allow accessing external storage, printers, access logs, etc... looking in /etc/group should tell you what groups your old user's in, or run grep olduser /etc/group then similar to above sudo adduser <username> <group>

For some GUI instructions, see these Q's

Then once the new user is up & running, remove your old user & home files. No reinstall required (unless you wanted to securely wipe the disk, or going to install a newer version anyway...)

Community
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Xen2050
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