I’m guessing yes, that you have to make a back up of all your files etc. But I figured I’d ask anyway, just in case.

To anyone who’s done it, how do you prepare when you change distro?

  • Owl [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    30 days ago

    You should back up your files when making a major change to your computer, regardless of if it shouldn’t cause problems (you should back up your files routinely anyway; hard drives fail).

    On your next install, if you put /home in its own partition, that’ll make distro hopping easier (you should STILL back up your shit sometimes though). This can sometimes be more jank than a clean install though, because programs put their config files in /home, and oops your new distro has an older version of whateverthefuck that gets confused by the newer config file.

    Some things to check out when hopping:

    • Mint is a fork of Ubuntu which is a fork of Debian. I think it’s worth exploring that tree.

    • Try things with different desktop environments. Mint is Cinnamon, but a lot of people like KDE. There’s also Gnome, XFCE, random shit. You can swap these around to some extent, but a distro with KDE is going to have KDE apps pre-installed and give a more consistent KDE experience.

    • Try a tiling window manager! Some people love those fuckers.

    • Sick of Debian? Try Fedora or an Arch-based distro like Cachy or Majaro.

    • Arch btw? Arch boots to a black screen and expects you to install it yourself via terminal and wiki. Hilarious.