Install a base-only system on the new machine.
[...]Thanks! But, I know I'm missing other things. The more I investigate, the harder it seems.
For the DBs, you'll need to export and import them, being the safest way. The only packages that are platform independent are the "all" packages, which are mainly some text scripts and documentation.
Mysql, ok. But openldap has "(Btree, version 9, native byte-order)". So I should dump that as well, to ldif, and import it again.
And there are platform specific files even under home/.kde[1]My Mozilla profile has some files(key3.db, for example, and I don't know what it is) in the same "native byte order" format. And who knows which other programs have similar files and how they will react when having to deal with those files in another platform.
Maybe packages should report if the data they use is platform independent or not. Separate the platform-dependency data and programs. Berkely DB files are easy to spot, but there might be other files I will never know of until a program stops working (easier) or behaves oddly (harder).
I guess iMac users moving from iMac/powerpc to iMac/intel will have the more or less the same problems. I will ask the people at debian-powerpc.
To bad about losing the G5, its a nice platform to work on.
Yes, I know. Just when everything was working in the kernel. I'm looking forward to the new iMacs though.
Eduardo.[1] ./share/apps/kdevcppsupport/pcs/stl.kind.idx: Berkeley DB (Btree, version 8, native byte-order)