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


What holiday?
School break. It would be very bad if I messed something up when distro-hopping during the school weeks, as being able to use my laptop is quite important for schoolwork.
As long as you back up your data nothing can go wrong. Worst case is that you use a live usb for the work you have to do
But you are right, it’s always good to have some time to get to know a new system