Post #3591054

2026-07-04 21:43 UTC

I have been wondering about this. People recommend backing up /home and then reinstalling very casually, eg many recommend a new install when the new Debian stable is released every two years. My personal files and most of my user setup are stored in /home but wouldn’t many customisations be stored in /? I have been tweaking things for nearly a year to get everything working. I wouldn’t want to spend ages to reinstall applications (flatpaks and all) and re-create my working setup. People being so relaxed about nuking their setup tells me I may be missing something here.

Replies (2)

@sludgewife@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2026-07-04 22:36

your customizations should usually go in /etc and /usr/local so you could back those up. your distro ought to have a guide on backing up your package selection. but yeah i don’t enjoy wiping everything and starting over

Open ##3592187
@IronKrill@lemmy.ca 2026-07-05 20:18

Yeah there’s a fair bit outside of home people don’t mention. Basically any system-level stuff: fstab mounts, all your system packages, /opt installs, config tweaks you had to do. It tales some time to get set back up after a while on the same install. After having to reinstall a couple times myself I now don’t touch anything outside of /home by hand. It’s all scripted so that I can copy /home, run the script, and be back up and running. Well, theoretically, there’s usually a hiccup or two. But the peace of mind knowing it’s all (self) documenting is quite nice. Not for everybody of course.

Open ##3611983