I am thinking of switching from Fedora 43 KDE to EndeavourOS during the holidays, mostly to try out new stuff, it being Arch-based and rolling release. It would also give me an excuse to finally overwrite my dual boot Windows partition that I now never use (initially set up for playing Minecraft Bedrock with my little brother, but with a PaperMC server w/ Geyser and Floodgate, Windows is no longer necessary). This would be my first “distro hop” (technically I switched from GNOME to KDE, but that’s not really a distro hop since I didn’t reinstall the whole OS), so I have a few questions.
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I have a self-hosted Nextcloud, so how do I make sure that my files will sync properly after I hop? (i.e. avoiding reuploading the same files twice when I set it up in EndeavourOS, not losing any of my files) Similar question on Forgejo/Codeberg and git, does it automagically figure out where the remotes are, or is there something else I have to do?
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How do I properly move program data/settings/etc? (e.g. default templates for LibreOffice, preferences in Godot, Minecraft worlds and mods installed with Prism Launcher) I understand that some programs have some of that built-in (see settings json in VSCodium, exporting bookmarks from Firefox/using Mozilla account to sync settings) but many programs don’t have that functionality.
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I am currently very happy with KDE Plasma. I do have to ask, is there another option aside from KDE that is equally or more customisable? Or would it be better to stick with KDE for better support, compatibility, etc.?
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Are there any Arch/EndeavourOS-specific quirks that I need to know before making the move?
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Finally, does anyone have any tips for distro-hopping? That is, how do I not screw up and lose all my data? I do know that I have to back up all my files before doing this (obviously) in multiple locations.
edit: I have tested a bit in a live boot version of EndeavourOS, and it seems that everything works. Trackpad, Bluetooth, WiFi, sound, etc. all work. One thing I found weird was scaling didn’t work (is that just a live boot thing?). Another thing, EndeavourOS uses X11 rather than Wayland like on Fedora. Will that break any programs? (probably not, usually it’s the inverse, but just checking)
Don’t. 🙂
Or rather, try as many distributions as you want, but use virtual machines for that - once you find one that Just Works, there’s no reason to “hop” anymore.
It makes more sense to do it that way, but I’d want to stay for a couple of months on a distro and then hop on. The feeling is different even though it may not be.