I have a simple wish, with a probably not so simple solution.

I recently started with linux (Arch kde), I’m loving it, I quickly realized that this OS and almost all apps, are highly customizable, I’m laving that as well. My problem is the unavoidable reinstalls and that I have a laptop.

Is there any way that I can save all my configs, apps and my apps’ configs, and transfer them over to my laptop, while almost having a very quick back-up. I realize that I could turn it into an ISO somehow, but that wouldn’t work (I think) because my laptop has vastly different hardware. I also realize the partitioning problem. So in my idealistic world, there should be a solution that requires a clean install (from scripts or manual) and some .sh file, that installs all my apps, pastes all my configs and reboots.

So is this possible? and if yes, how should I go about this? did someone make a tool for this already? Or(!) can I burn it to a flash and the drivers will correct themselves/I’ll deal with them later?

For final words I’d like to say that I’m far from finished configurating, but I’d like to know the proccess, to not shoot myself in the foot somewhere along the way of configing, thanks!

  • flashgnash@lemm.ee
    2·
    1 year ago

    NixOS and to a lesser extent nix package manager is great for this. Write a config for your entire setup, which will take a long time, but then you can carry that config with you through any and all future machines, and have every one of them setup just the way you like from the beginning

    I would highly suggest using NixOS for something like this, however if you don’t want to/can’t the following should apply to pretty much any other distro

    Most applications in Linux save their config in ~/. config/ or ~/.configname , if you copy these files and directories over to your new machine all your old settings should persist (this won’t copy applications themselves but will copy their settings for when you reinstall them)

    (though be warned this is a messy way to do it if you just copy absolutely everything without thinking, some settings you probably don’t want copied over)