I just bought a new computer. I’ll install fedora silverblue. Do I just need to copy the home directory? And crontab. What else do I need to move?
If you’re currently running a rpm distro, you can make it easier on yourself by using the duke nukem forever command to make a list of your installed programs: dnf list installed.
Once that’s outputting an appropriate format, dump it into a text file with | oldprogs.txt.
On your new computer, that same duke nukem forever command can be used to install from the list with something like dnf install << oldprogs.txt
I bet you can come up with a way to stuff all that into a neat little one liner that’ll provide error handling, output teeing and everything else!
One correction, it would be dnf list installed > oldprogs.txt. > instead of |.
Thanks, I can’t think of it as anything but duke nukem forever now. Your comment made my day.
Nice one.
On silverblue, everything is installed within a distrobox. I should back that up and make sure it’s in my home folder.
No not everything is installed in a Distrobox.
- the core system contains base stuff
- you can layer needed apps that need to be on the base system
- GUI apps are preferred as Flatpaks
- some random stuff may be in a Toolbox or Distrobox
- you can use pip, cargo and others on the base OS to install binaries there.
Nobody mentioned it yet, but my current no hassle solution is to:
just physically move the nvme from one computer to the other
Consider using tar to create an archive of your home directory, and then unpacking that on the new machine. This will help to capture all the links as well as regular files, and their permissions.
Take a minute to think what else you have changed on the old machine, and then take another minute to think how tricky it would be to replicate on a new machine. Downloading the apps again is gloriously easy. Replacing configs, or keys and certificates, is not!
I normally archive /etc as well, and then I can copy out the specific files I need.
Did you install databases? You’ll want to follow specific instructions for those.
Have you set up web sites? You’ll want to archive /var/www as well.
Thx.
Meaning, backup a list of flatpak apps and reinstall them on the new machine
See if flatpak has some sort of export format that would let you install everything the same on the other machine. Some package managers have that.
I just made the move to another computer, using the same distro and DE setup as the old one. So far I managed by backing up ~/ and /usr/ so I could drop in system and programming settings.
I don’t know how that will work if you’re going for a new distro but it’s always good to have your old configs for reference!
