Hi, Linux! I’ve been using Linux for many years now, but haven’t moved distros in awhile. I’m considering it now, and I really would like to migrate over all my customized system and software settings. So far, I am thinking of backing up everything that begins with a dot in my home folder, all of my systemd service files, and user/root crontabs. I know this is missing some things, but I’m not sure what. Any advice/warnings/examples people care to share?

  • macniel@feddit.de
    10·
    1 year ago

    You could start by having /home on a different partition. So that you simply can mount it in your new system and have the same settings and files as previously.

    • electric_nanOP
      3·
      1 year ago

      This would be a big help, and I used to do that. I’ve actually heard that this can cause some problems between distros though.

      • mvee
        4·
        1 year ago

        My biggest problem with it is forgetting which system I booted into when I use the same desktop environments :P and yeah configs can get out of date and inconsistent but I usually just blow them away since I’m not into customizing my desktop much

      • donio@beehaw.org
        3·
        1 year ago

        It shouldn’t as long as you make sure that the numeric uid/gid of your user account matches the one from the original system. If that’s not feasible then you can chown the tree.

        • electric_nanOP
          1·
          1 year ago

          Hmm, this is actually something I will be fixing from the last time I repurposed this PC. What exactly do you mean chown the tree? I know what chown is, but what does tree mean in this context?

          • macniel@feddit.de
            1·
            1 year ago

            tree in this context would mean the whole directory, its files and its subdirectories. Like the whole Directory Tree.