Hi, Linux! I’ve been using Linux for many years now, but haven’t moved distros in awhile. I’m considering it now, and I really would like to migrate over all my customized system and software settings. So far, I am thinking of backing up everything that begins with a dot in my home folder, all of my systemd service files, and user/root crontabs. I know this is missing some things, but I’m not sure what. Any advice/warnings/examples people care to share?
You’re not going to be able to take anything for granted. Get a new disk, load out the whole new distro on the new disk mount your old disc and start copying stuff over. Services aren’t just going to copy you’re going to need the binaries and all their dependencies. Then they’re dependencies dependencies. The only sane path is to do installs and then bring your customizations forward.