I’m running Manjaro XFCE on my laptop, but I’ll soon get a new laptop. So, I want to save all the installed programs and settings on a bootable flash drive so as not to start from scratch all over again. How can I achieve that?
If you intend to create a list of packages you installed you can use the following command:
pacman -Qqe > pkglist.txt
After a fresh install and installation of yay you can use
yay -S --needed - < pkglist.txt
to install missing packages from that list, even if AUR packages are included.
If you have a separate /home partition, you can merge it into your new installation to keep your settings.
Clonezilla or Rescuezilla Live DVD
Adding to the comment on using clonezilla as this is most likely the shortest path.
The new system disk capacity must be equal >= the old system disk
Before doing so - ensure the old device is running on the free graphic drivers - this will minimize the trouble getting the new system up.
There can be some partition resizing if the new disk is bigger - and this can only be done using a USB booted system e.g. gparted live or a Manjaro ISO with gparted (ruling out KDE).
I think I’ll run into some problems because my old laptop has AMD graphics card, while the new one will have Nivdia, so I think the old drivers will cause a problem. So, how can I only save the system shortcuts and settings only?