Switching from Manjaro to EndeavorOS, is there a way to preserve my home directory?
The title says it all, I'd like to switch my operating system and preserve most of my files. Any other info I should know before the move would be nice as well.
If you're frequently distro-hopping, I recommend using a seperate /home partition. I did that before I settled down, I can't begin to describe how convenient it was (especially if you use Flatpak).
To do this one could install the new distro on a new partition, boot to it, delete everything from the old installation except the hone directory, move your user to the base directory (/home/sorrybookbroke -> /sorrybookbroke) before editing your /etc/fstab and mounting the old partition to /home
This way, no external drive is needed like @[email protected] suggested. Of course, their suggestion is the easiest, but this is the one I personally chose.
I'd recommend starting fresh. Make a new one but don't delete the old one. You can then copy over what you want without bringing over anything like dotfiles with bad settings.
If /home is on a different partition just don't format it and set it to mount on the same place and you should be good to go. If it's not make a backup, then create a partition just for it, install your new system, restore the backup, and next time you won't need a backup.
Why? Serious question. I kind of understand /home, but why the others? I used to do it a bit, but now I don't bother. I never knew how big to make each partition, and have had problems where something like /boot fills up and freezes the system.