Supercrunchy

joined 2 weeks ago

Depending on how much customization you have done, it might be easier and safer to just install the OS from scratch to the new disk. You'll also end up in a much more "clean" state afterwards.

  • Your program settings, browser favorites, etc should all be stored in /home/
  • Your system settings are generally stored in /etc

I would take a backup of the whole system (important!), then take a second copy of only these two folders (save all the permissions and ownership info, and also use sudo to access all the files in /etc !). After you have saved everything, wipe both disks, set them up like you want and reinstall all the software you need. Finally you can restore from these two folders.

You will not want to restore everything in /etc, just the files you have manually/indirectly edited, and also you will need to preserve the correct file permissions, so be careful on what you do there. Some files like /etc/fstab hold the information on how your disks are mounted, so you really don't want to restore those (same for /etc/passwd, systemd units, and many others). Basically restore selectively only what you need, or reconfigure the software again and just restore your /home

It shouldn't take as much time as it sounds, because most of the settings should be in your home folder, and you can reinstall all the software pretty quickly when you need them. You also won't have to fight all the problems if you end up with a weird/incomplete setup when moving the root.

For splitting the app in the taskbar I found it useful to "install" the PWA (you got to find the hidden option in chrome for that..), if it's supported by the website... It still uses the same cookies and addons, but at least it doesn't easily get merged with the main browser window and behaves like a proper desktop application. I mainly use firefox though and it doesn't support PWAs (easily, at least). It's a shame it's not more common, because it's a much better way to run software than the many electron apps, each having their own chromium installation (no download, no long installation process, full sandboxing, and you can have addons & adblockers affect the pwa!)

[–] Supercrunchy@programming.dev 5 points 2 weeks ago

Also let's represent all numbers in scientific notation, I'm sure that's going to make it easier to read...