* Spencer Collyer <spencer@spencercollyer.plus.com> [10/30 11:42]
I am looking to replace my current desktop PC, which is getting on for 8 years old now, with a more up-to-date one. Ideally I want the new one to be set up the same as my current one, which has been running on Arch since I first got it. I keep my Arch up-to-date by running a full update roughly every four weeks.
What is the best way to set up the new one to mirror the existing one? I'd like to have all the same packages installed, with basically the same setup, except for obvious points like the new PC having a different IP address and name on my network.
My initial idea was something like the following:
1) Install a basic Arch system on the new computer 2) Get the list of installed packages from the old computer (I think there is a way to do this using Pacman?) 3) Somehow get Pacman to install the same list of packages on the new computer. 4) Tidy up any config files that need changing - e.g. for the aforementioned IP address / computer name stuff. 5) Copy over my /home directory 6) Copy over various data directories/partitions I have -e.g. I have a whole bunch of images stored in a separate partition that I'll want to copy over. The stuff in here is all self-contained so should be easy enough to copy over.
I found thread https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=171726 which had some ideas as well - the above is sort-of based on stuff I found on there along with my own thoughts.
Does that look like a reasonable plan? Anything I might be missing?
Thanks for your attention.
Regards,
Spencer I always forget to reply to the list, sorry!
A new PC/Laptop would likely use uefi and it takes maybe 10 minutes to install a minimal profile arch, so save your files, and your config folder, and do a new install. Did it yesterday....15 minutes and i3-wm was up and running. OS: Arch Linux x86_64 Host: X570 AORUS ELITE -CF Kernel: 6.0.6-arch1-1 Uptime: 15 hours, 19 mins Packages: 695 (pacman) Shell: zsh 5.9 Resolution: 3840x2160, 2160x3840, 2160x3840 WM: i3 Theme: gruvbox-dark-gtk [GTK2/3] Icons: Adwaita [GTK2], ArchCursorComplete [GTK3] Terminal: st Terminal Font: UbuntuMono CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (32) @ 3.400GHz GPU: AMD ATI Radeon RX 5600 OEM/5600 XT / 5700/5700 XT Memory: 4682MiB / 64228MiB -- Regards, ---------------------------- - ArchLinux - when you have better things to do than fixing a system