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by Shorel 699 days ago
My system is different and simpler:

The root partition / and the home partition /home are different.

There's a /home/etc/ folder with a very small set of configuration files I want to save, everything else is nuked on reinstall.

When I do a reinstall, the root partition is formatted, the /home partition is not.

This allows me to test different distros and not be tied to any particular distro or any particular backup tool, if I test a distro and I don't like it, then it is very easy to change it.
2 comments
dataflow 699 days ago
The implication here is that your home directory can actually work across distros? How in the world do you do that? Surely you have to encounter errors sometimes when cached data or configs point to nonexistent paths, or other incompatibilities come up?
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ijustlovemath 699 days ago
Typically ~ contains user specific config files for applications, which are (usually) programmed to be distro agnostic. If you're installing the same applications across distros, I don't see why this wouldn't work without too much effort. After all, most distros are differentiated by just two things:

- their package management tooling

- their filesystem layout (eg where do libraries etc go)

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Shorel 692 days ago
Yes, in general I have more issues going from one gnome version to the next, than changing distros.

The gnome extensions need to be reinstalled, then they work and their configuration is preserved.

It must be because I don't use KDE now. I used it back in the day, when it was KDE 1.5 and 2.

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Shorel 692 days ago
Also: I always use the same username.
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ijustlovemath 699 days ago
/home/etc or ~/etc?
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Shorel 692 days ago
/home/etc

It is a backup directory owned by root. The reason is that it sits in the partition that is preserved, and it is outside my user folder, because it is better organized that way.

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birdiesanders 699 days ago
Those are equivalent.
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execat 699 days ago
No. ~etc is equivalent to /home/etc. ~/etc is the same as /home/<current user>/etc.
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michaelmior 699 days ago
On most systems, that is not the case. Typically a user's home directory is `/home/USERNAME` so `~/etc` would be `/home/USERNAME/etc`.
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ijustlovemath 699 days ago
Try it for yourself:

[ /home/etc = ~/etc ] || echo theyre different

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