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.

  1. 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?

  2. 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.

  3. 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.?

  4. Are there any Arch/EndeavourOS-specific quirks that I need to know before making the move?

  5. 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)

  • HelloRoot@lemy.lolEnglish
    5·
    6 hours ago

    You can mostly just copy your home partition/dir with something like rsync.

    Step by step:

    1. Install new distro, in the installer make sure to use the same username (otherwise there is some extra work involved but still doable)

    2. start up new distro to make sure it works

    3. reboot into old distro or into live linux

    4. use rsync to copy olddistro/home/user to newdistro/home/user (you have to think about whether it makes sense to overwrite all files or if there is maybe some special exception somehow. Like there may be some idiomatic bashrc on one distro that does not work well with the other)

    (I’ve done that multiple times now and there is some minor fixing involved sometimes, like with the bashrc example, but otherwise it’s super easy. If you ever get stuck just hit me up and I can hop on a Rustdesk/discord/whatever support session)