App backup?

[Edward78]

Can I back up my apps, so I can restore them as is, if I reinstall Llinux?

[Eigenvektor]

You generally don't need to backup the apps, just their settings.

 

I backup my home directory using rsync (excluding some cache directories etc.). Make sure to include hidden directories like .local, .mozilla, .thunderbird, because that's where their user specific settings live.

 

After reinstalling Linux and installing these programs again, restoring the home directory is enough to get back pretty much all of my in-app settings (e.g. bookmarks and settings in Firefox)

[C2dan88]

If you want gui for rsync alternative is timeshift

[10leej]

19 hours ago, Edward78 said:

Can I back up my apps, so I can restore them as is, if I reinstall Llinux?

Yes, application settings are stored in your home directory in the ".config" and ".local" folders, some are weird and make up their own path though.

 

As for the packages themselves? You can't really do it in a gui, but using the terminal you can ask your package manager to list all the installed applications like this

 

Debian/Ubuntu based

apt list --installed

ArchLinux based

pacman -Qe

Gentoo

cd /var/db/pkg/ && ls -d */*

Fedora/openSUSE/RHEL based distros

rpm -qa

then you can cat the the output to a basica text files by appending this to the above listed commands

>> packages.txt

 

As for using that list to reinstall? You can simply tell you package manager to use the packages.txt file

apt install packages.txt
dnf in packages.txt
emerge -a "packages.txt"

 

[The Hope]

You can backup your configuration files with rsync.

 

And you can use NixOS so you can easily reinstall all your old apps. (reproducible deployment)

[10leej]

1 hour ago, The Hope said:

You can backup your configuration files with rsync.

 

And you can use NixOS so you can easily reinstall all your old apps. (reproducible deployment)

Are you willing to walk a user through installing configuring and maintaining a NixOS system? If not, please don't make it sound so easy. Otherwise I'd be running around talking about the benefits of Gentoo and how I use it on all my systems because it is objectively (not practically) better.