What's the least painful way to reinstall Manjaro and get back all the settings?

[1Travler]

I am not sure this is the correct place but here goes. I wish to reformat my hard drive; reinstall Manjaro and get back all the setting I have in KDE. Whats the lease painful way.

[realmain]

If you have your /home in a separate partition:

• don’t format that partition,
• Format your / and re-install whatever you need there
• then just mount the unformatted /home in your new installation.

Otherwise, you have to:

• back up all of your configs/documents from /home
• Restore them to the new installation.
  • ensure you split / and /home when re-installing.

[Fabby]

What @realmain said and for your re-install, before you wipe your /, do a:

pamac list > /tmp/MyPackages.txt

to get all currently installed packages as a reminder to what to reinstall (or not) and don’t forget to save that file to a USB stick before you reformat your /! )

P.S. Also read this:

[HowTo] become a Manjaro power user when you're a wizard at Windows but a N00b at Manjaro / Linux

Difficulty: ☆☆☆☆☆ Remember when you installed your very first Windows, added bells and whistles and then couldn’t see the trees for the wood any more and had to re-install? Well, you’re in the same situation now: You’re a N00b again! Embrace it! I know right now you’re thinking: Why is this so much more difficult than Windows? Whereas in 6 months time, you’ll be like: Why can’t I make Windows jump through hoops like I do with Linux??? So, below …

[Fabby]

I’ve marked this answer as the solution to your question as it is by far the best answer you’ll get.

What's the least painful way to reinstall Manjaro and get back all the settings?

If you have your /home in a separate partition: don’t format that partition, Format your / and re-install whatever you need there then just mount the unformatted /home in your new installation. Otherwise, you have to: back up all of your configs/documents from /home Restore them to the new installation. ensure you split / and /home when re-installing.

However, if you disagree with my choice, please feel free to take any other answer as the solution to your question or even remove the solution altogether: You are in control! (If you disagree with my choice, just send me a personal message and explain why I shouldn’t have done this or or if you agree)

P.S. In the future, please don’t forget to come back and click the 3 dots below the answer to mark a solution like this below the answer that helped you most:

so that the next person that has the exact same problem you just had will benefit from your post as well as your question will now be in the “solved” status.