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  • HurlingDurling@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    When you swap distros, how do you manage all your files and settings? Do you just save your files externally and start from scratch every time you change a distro?

    • CeeBee@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      how do you manage all your files and settings?

      I don’t. I just use a separate drive for /home. And since I just prefer KDE no matter which system I’m using, all my files, settings, layouts, panels, etc are exactly the same whenever I switch out the OS.

    • sonnenzeit@feddit.de
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      11 months ago

      Typically your personal files and app settings are stored somewhere in your user home folder, eg under /home/bob/. Ideally you’ve set up your system in a way so that the entire /home/ folder is stored on its own disk or partition at least. That let’s you boot up a different distro while using the same home directory. But even if you haven’t set it up separately from the rest of the system, you can still manually copy all those files.

      Not every single application setting is transferable between distros as they sometimes use different versions but generally it works well. Many apps also let you manually export profiles or settings and reimport them elsewhere later. Or they have online synchronization baked in.

      • HurlingDurling@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        So in my previous experience I never get prompted to create separate partition, but I have seen others use this method in the past, however this should probably be a step in any Linux install wizard.

    • Meowing Thing@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      You can have a separate partition for your files so that you change only your OS. Even with windows. This way you’ll always keep your files and just need to customize your distro and reinstall your apps when you change between distros

    • K0W4L5K1@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 months ago

      Yeah i kept my files on a seperate drive and just wiped the one with the os. for settings i was trying a different distro and desktop enviroment so those where always a bit different and i started from scratch