Salutations!
I’ve been running Manjaro on my T495 without a hitch for a long time, now. With all the chatter about Manjaro possibly not being maintained, I wanted to explore jumping to a different distro like CachyOS. The problem is, when I installed Manjaro on a BTRFS filesystem, I didn’t make a separate /home partition. Is there a way to migrate to CachyOS without deleting /home?
I realize BTRFS uses subvolumes instead of “real” partitions, but I’m not sure how to proceed. In my initial searches, there is a process to rename the subvolumes to something else, install CachyOS, then use rsync to restore my files, but I don’t know WHERE to do this. In the LiveUSB environment? During the installer? (See post Here)
Or am I better off just using rsync to backup the whole /home folder to an external drive, install CachyOS fresh, then rsync my files over when the installer is completed but before I boot for the first time?
Apologies if this is some basic stuff, I just don’t want to lose any data, especially my Docker containers and pictures.
I’d just reinstall fresh and manually move any of my needed files from the old home to the new home. Did a refresh a few weeks ago myself. It gives you a good opportunity to dig through there and make sure you’re keeping just the things you want to bring over.
Yet another usecase for NixOS
I would choose the rsync–>backup /home to external disk then install Cachy fresh, then copy /home back.
It’s a known, clean and simple process. Why complicate things further?
yup, but careful with hidden folder like .config and a few others
Will rsync not grab those?
Edit: I am saying rsync should grab all that by default.
Yes but switching distro you can fuck up some settings… Better to copy documents downloads etc but all the hidden directories I do it selectively
Gotcha. I suppose I would grab everything and then selectively restore what I need. Having the backup also allows one to paw through it for settings or whatever you might’ve forgotten.
