2y ago

Distro hoppers, how do you manage your config files?

I am currently trying to keep track of my config files in a repo to be able to get the configa back together easily if/when I change distro, but I am not sure if that's the best way or if I should be using some tool to help me since I some programs keep preferences in other directories other then $HOME (at least I think so). Can you guys share with me your must used/trusted simple process for this?

Thank you and specially thanks to everyone who is being helpful in this community for the past few weeks, I've learned much and got some very useful tips from the comments in my posts and in other people posts too.

38 comments

I manage them by not. My configs are gone when I wipe my drive and I simply recreate them from memory. Things get forgotten, new things get changed. Holding on to the past too tightly will make you unable to leave it.
- I've struggled to put in words my stance on this, but you said it well. If I backed up my configs, I would get stuck doing things the exact same way for ever. If I backed up my configs I'd be still using Vim with Vungle plugins, now I use Neovim with Packer plugins. I would be still using urxvt with powerline-status bar, now I use Alacritty with starship status. I'd be still using my old favourite Inconsolata font, now I use Fantasque for everything.
  There are always newer (and sometimes better) and certainly different ways of tweaking your PC to suit your needs. If you hold on too tight to your old configs, you might miss out on discovering the next cool thing to enhance your experience.
  Note: there are of course some home dir things I definitely keep backed up that are irreplaceable, like SSH private keys, GPG keyrings and private keystores, and even my Firefox profile directory.

I manage them using git and stow.
Stow is very useful, but a bit unknown. Hard to explain in a Lemmy post, but basically it helps you manage symlinks between your git repo directory and your $HOME.
You can "install" and "uninstall" configs by managing the symlinks with stow.
- +1 for stow, it's so simple yet powerful.
- I do the same plus a python script to automate the stowing. This plus konsave plus a script to install packages and it is a breeze to reinstall the OS
- Same but with the addition of a Brewfile to manage installed apps/CLIs (supports both Mac and Linux)

Personal git repo with my dotfiles and other aliases/bashrc items.
- I use gnu stow (with --no-folding) and track my stow directory in a Git repo. This allows you to easily swap out distro specific differences, like the location of git_prompt.sh or aliases that map to different package managers. Also, you can switch between different window managers or desktop environments with a simple unstow and stow of .xinitrc files.

I'm not as fancy as using git. I have a folder with all my config files, and it's not a lot, in Nextcloud. When I'm on a new install, I sync my Nextcloud account then create symlinks to the files in the folder. So far no issues. I just keep track of where each simlink needs to go.

separate nvmes for the root-fs and for my users home folder.
configure /etc/fstab to point nvme to /home/username.
Done! I can wipe and hop as much as I like, and everything's just there.
Tbh, i only hopped once, from Arch to Fedora and it was painless.

I keep my files in a repo on gitlab and use yadm to sync them.
Yadm is a wrapper around git, so you have all the standard git commands plus some extra to work with templating and encryption etc.

not distro-hopping, but i use nix, which can be used on anydistro.

Home manager fan here. Every install I tweak something if I feel like it.

I'm not a distrohopper, but GNU stow is delightfully simple. See my dotfiles as an example.

I use usb stick with Ventoy. I copy it into .config and add a line for aliassrc into .bashrc and I'm all set.

Resilio Sync and symlinks. The symlinks aren't great but I never remember to update git.. Resilio is wonderful.

Ansible... Ansible... ansible...
Write a ansible playbook that contain any of the config...
Or Timeshift everything... and restore on new distro
- It never even occurred to me that you can restore a timeshift on a different distro. I feel so stupid lol
  
  You can lah... If not it's useless. Haha.. 😂

i wasn't able to. Just lut them up on github. but now i have nix so i can just set up flake and git clone. Got my configs.

I have a git repository in ~/dotfiles, and symbolic link the ones I want as I need them. I've only just started tracking my dotfiles and I'm not super disciplined with it yet, so I still have slightly different setups on each system.

I used to have a git repo on Github for my dotfiles but I took it down when I realized that there are some config files I don't want public like my newsboat links or API keys on my ~/.bashrc. Now I just sync it encrypted to some file storage but I may put it on my private git server instead where password-store lives.

I manage my config files with RCM, this way: https://fedoramagazine.org/managing-dotfiles-rcm/
But I use it for share my dotfiles between my home and my work computer. For distro hopping only, I have my /home mounted in a secondary HD, so it's never formatted.
For the config files in other paths, I keep a log of everything I changed in Dropbox and then I redo. I admit that this may not be the best solution, but the others works good.
- sounds awesome! will try this approach

With great difficulty... And tbh mostly copy-paste to a MEGA sync

I'm not really a distro hopper but I just have my home directory as a git repository with a gitignore file. https://git.sr.ht/~cowingtonpost/dotfiles/tree/main/item/.gitignore

I don't stow or anything difficult anymore, it complicates things.
I just save everything in my gitlab account and then I manually create the links.

I copy everything in my home folder and paste it all in the new installation. Works well if I stick with the same desktop environment.

Via a script that "automatically" copies (and installs) everything I need to its respective folder.

I just don't wipe out /home when I reinstall. Same /home partition, different distro on /

38 comments