Moving KDE settings to new system

[Olli]

@toast

Yeah that’s an option but my existing home directory still contains files from 2 years ago when I was moving over to Linux and trying loads of distros. There’s stuff in there from Mint, Fedora, Manjaro Gnome, and loads of other stuff. I’m going to start the new system off clean and just bring over what I need.

nevertheless how you’re going in the end, but @maycne.sonahoz advice to copy everything for example to a external drive is a good advice. I’ll promise there will be always something missing if you set up such a system and it’s priceless to have a copy in the backyard

[toast]

Thanks. I’ll have a look at that. I did not even know it existed.

[toast]

I agree. I will be bringing a copy of my home directory over to the new machine for sure so I can cherry pick from it. I just won’t be overwriting the new home directory with the old.

[Aragorn]

@toast

Am I right in thinking that finding all the dotfiles involved in kde and manjaro system settings would be a nightmare?

Most of what you need — i.e. the Plasma-specific stuff — will be in ~/.config and ~/.local.

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@chriz

you could try Plasma Customization Saver - KDE Store for transfering most of your settings.

This is indeed a good tool for exporting one’s styling customizations. It should normally also handle keyboard shortcuts, but like you, I’m not sure about that either.

[toast]

Thanks for all the replies. Food for thought.

[zbe]

@toast

I agree. I will be bringing a copy of my home directory over to the new machine for sure so I can cherry pick from it. I just won’t be overwriting the new home directory with the old.

That’s the correct thing to do, especially if you don’t know what exactly you want. You can cross check when you are missing something. And the rest you can just delete after few months.

[toast]

I went through this whole thing with a laptop very recently, and that’s how I dealt with it (just retained the old home folder until I knew I was done with it).

I just asked about this as I have more settings altered on the desktop and I wondered if there was an easier way.

[zbe]

@toast

I wondered if there was an easier way.

Like @Aragorn mentioned, KDE settings are all in .config and .local/share.

[toast]

That much I knew, but which folders, which files. I think it would be quite a task. All my gimp files are in one place, same for libreoffice, etc. But I’ve noticed the KDE stuff seems to be all over the place - within .config and .local/share.

[Olli]

i wouldn’t bother about all other configs, because they are hardware-related and you’ll set up a new pc. that only thing you should note yourself are add-ons and extensions that you installed for example at gimp, but i would set them up completely new.

but i think in what situation you are. all the data over the years can be a pain in the butt and to sort them is a job for long and cold days in winter. have you ever thought about a nas (network-storage). you can get them from very expensive down to a simple raspberry with hard-disks. i use a raspberry, a usb-hub that is self powered and put the drives on. in this case iii’m safe if i have to delete my internal drive for whatever reason.

[winnie]

@Olli

I’ll promise there will be always something missing if you set up such a system and it’s priceless to have a copy in the backyard

Because if the OP of this thread is not careful during this copy and migration process, and they accidentally delete the original files without confirming the important files were successfully copied over, then their data can be considered…

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…toast.

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Now selling tickets to my stand-up comedy tour. Grab them while they’re 50% off!

[toast]

Best not to post unless you have something constructive to post.

Settings and dotfiles are something I can always set up again. My data, on which my business depends to continue functioning, is backed up in multiple places on and off site. So don’t you worry.

[zbe]

@toast

but which folders, which files

Perhaps this can, at least partially, help you.

[toast]

Thanks. Will have a look.

[Ben]

I just replaced a motherboard, an i3 with a Ryzen 5600G, and RAM - so my disks were still in place.

I did a fresh install to the SSD, and manually imported my configuration. Simply restoring the backup will likely cause issues with the new hardware etc.

The main jobs I had to take care of were 1. ensuring the drives were plugged and mounted the same as on the old system (with the same permissions) and 2. Replacing enp2s0 with enp3s0 in conky config (otherwise identical)
3. Getting hddtemp.service going again to give temperatures in conky.

Apart from that it’s all hunky dory - I kept Dolphin open, two panes /home vs /snapshot/home and copied folders as required.

As I no longer put extra stuff in my /usr/share folders (I keep a ‘resources’ folder for custom icons, fonts and other favourites - stuff like my favourite Chameleon-Skyblue-Regular cursors which are no longer in AUR).

So basically most stuff just works - I didn’t blindly reinstall everything (I’ll install as and when required) so it’s cleaner and leaner.

When I migrated from Linux Mint some 8 years ago, I had already set an ‘Admin’ folder to /Dropbox/Admin’ where my conky scripts live, so they don’t even need importing once Dropbox is up again.

So yes, aside from importing via Timeshift restore, I’d say a dual pane Dolphin is the way to go.

[toast]

Yes, I think that’s what I’ll be doing. Thanks.

[FadeMind]

I made copy of /etc via this script in bash:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
cd $HOME
mkdir etc-20$(date +%y%m%d)-MNJ;\
sudo cp -rf /etc/* etc-20$(date +%y%m%d)-MNJ/;\
printf "Compressing etc... \n"
sudo tar cf - etc-20$(date +%y%m%d)-MNJ/ | xz -T 0 -7 -zf - > etc-20$(date +%y%m%d)-MNJ.tar.xz;\
sudo chown 1000:100 etc-20$(date +%y%m%d)-MNJ.tar.xz;sudo rm -rf etc-20$(date +%y%m%d)-MNJ

Other backups:
Copy dot dirs from home (hidden). You can skip .cache

$HOME/.config
$HOME/.local

You can copy also customs from any .dot-begin-files from HOMEdir.

[toast]

Thanks for all the replies. It’s all done. Dotfiles imported as needed and no problems.

[maycne.sonahoz]

@maycne.sonahoz

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