To add some clarity, Pop uses GNOME and is working on their own desktop based on Rust and Mint uses Cinnamon, a fork of old GNOME that they've significantly upgraded. I've used both and like both a lot, but have come to prefer GNOME.

Oh yes! Thanks for reminding me. The ~ is a shortcut to the active users home folder? Thanks!

dd duplicates directories. It's a terminal app. Built into all Linux distros. For more details, do a man dd in a terminal session. Clonezilla is a distro that runs a live system from USB or DVD which lets you backup and restore entire systems. Both are powerful, but have a learning curve.

Definitely take your time and soak up more info from other sources :) I hope all of this turns out to be at least marginally helpful :D

If you don't encrypt the drive, yes. Some things you will have to reauthenticate, however, like your online accounts, but when those are reconnected everything should work as intended. That you should confirm, however. I don't encrypt, though I should ;)

I'm utterly useless with base arch 🤣 If it works for you, who'm I to complain 👍

I guess I should have made that clear. Your /home directory is where everything user-related is stored in invisible folders. All your settings for the OS and applications are kept in there. So, if you copy that directory and restore it to a fresh install of the same distro, all of your settings will be restored. It's been years, but I've done it a few times.

The only thing you'll really need to do after that is re-install all of the apps you installed. Once you have, however, every apps settings are restored.

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~/boot is at the root of the drive. Your home folder should be in ~/home/username. THAT you can copy wholesale. I believe. Don't take my word for it. Deja Dup can do it for you, as well, or the entire system.

Aha! I figured it out. Comments are sequestered to the instance the user is commenting from. Federation :)

Thanks and sorry! I'm getting it fixed now :D

Hmm. I can't see any comments, though I seem to be able to comment myself.

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