4 ms·

What you should be able to do but I have never tried in practice is to keep your home directory. Most "novice" computer users like me, would only need one user

by pooper 4y ago

What you should be able to do but I have never tried in practice is to keep your home directory. Most "novice" computer users like me, would only need one user anyway although this should work for multiple users as well? I think in theory at least if your username is anthropodie, you should be able to copy /home/anthropodie to an external hard disk just for backup, install your new distro, set up your new user and copy your user home directory back. Anyone tried this?

anthropodie 4y ago
By clean setup I mean, reinstalling / /home is kept intact. After installation of apps on new setup I don't even have to configure them most of times because they can find their config directories in /home/myuser/
- pooper 4y ago
  but debian iirc has only one partition by default, no?
  - anthropodie 4y ago
    That is not true. I have configured /home on Debian.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mikro2nd 4y ago
The approach I've followed for many years is to have /home mount on a separate partition from anything else. Then when you do any kind of fresh install or upgrade, you only have to make sure that partition doesn't get touched (and usually that's the default) and all is well with the world. It would be slightly more work involving parted (or whatever partition manager you prefer) to create a new partition, resize existing partitions, etc., but quite doable (if tedious and time consuming).
tbran 4y ago
I used to keep my home dir on a separate partition, but I was always worried I'd wipe it out during the OS install. Instead I backup my home dir with borg backup to drives/cloud. I have a script to borg mount my most recent borg backup, so when I set up a new OS install, I just run the script and copy my files over from my backup to my computer's SSD. I love this method because I can easily install a different SSD, switch to a new computer, or just do a clean OS installation very easily.

by pooper 4y ago

anthropodie 4y ago

By clean setup I mean, reinstalling / /home is kept intact. After installation of apps on new setup I don't even have to configure them most of times because they can find their config directories in /home/myuser/

pooper 4y ago
but debian iirc has only one partition by default, no?
- anthropodie 4y ago
  That is not true. I have configured /home on Debian.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mikro2nd 4y ago

The approach I've followed for many years is to have /home mount on a separate partition from anything else. Then when you do any kind of fresh install or upgrade, you only have to make sure that partition doesn't get touched (and usually that's the default) and all is well with the world. It would be slightly more work involving parted (or whatever partition manager you prefer) to create a new partition, resize existing partitions, etc., but quite doable (if tedious and time consuming).

tbran 4y ago

I used to keep my home dir on a separate partition, but I was always worried I'd wipe it out during the OS install. Instead I backup my home dir with borg backup to drives/cloud. I have a script to borg mount my most recent borg backup, so when I set up a new OS install, I just run the script and copy my files over from my backup to my computer's SSD. I love this method because I can easily install a different SSD, switch to a new computer, or just do a clean OS installation very easily.