this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2024
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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For reproducibility, nothing really beats NixOS. That's not really what you're asking for, as that would not involve Clonezilla.
If you're frequently switching hardware, and want to have everything up and running, configured to your liking, in minutes, you're gonna have fun with NixOS in the long term. But I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, it has a steep learning curve and does require you to enjoy some tinkering. Worth it, imo
Otherwise, just pick a distro that you enjoy and create a separate home partition, when it's time to switch you do a fresh install and clone only the home partition. That'll get you 90% of the way to have your old setup on the new device
But what is a home partition?
I mean for me the problem is backing up my settings (including for every app) and I don't know where they are saved.
Backing up my pictures, documents and others isn't a problem.
Your settings for the most part are in your home directory, generally when you install a Linux system everything that isn't the bootloader is on one partition (system, installed applications, etc)
Your home directory is for anything specific to your user, meaning your downloads folder, your pictures, documents and also your .config folder which holds 90% of the config files
There are some weird ones that have directories outside of home, afaik that's stuff like network manager remembering your saved networks that runs outside of your user context
Usually your settings are saved under ~/.config