On Sun, 30 Oct 2022 15:10:59 +0100, Merlin Büge wrote:
Hi,
On Sun, 30 Oct 2022 11:42:24 +0000, Spencer Collyer wrote:
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.
For 2) and 3) see 2.5 and 2.6 here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman/Tips_and_tricks
4) Tidy up any config files that need changing - e.g. for the aforementioned IP address / computer name stuff.
To list modified config files, you can use:
pacman -Qii | awk '/^MODIFIED/ {print $2}'
Besides the network config, hostname and UUIDs probably also change, so watch out for that e.g. in custom backup scripts etc.
You may also want to check/migrate all unowned files (not tracked by the package manager):
pacreport --unowned-files
5) Copy over my /home directory
If you have the time and care, instead of copying the entire /home, you could manually copy the contents and decide what you want to keep. You may want to omit ~/.cache and some configuration dotfiles in ~ or ~/.config that you don't need anymore.
I would also keep the old drive around for some time in case you notice that you forgot something...
Good luck!
Thanks for the input Merlin. Some good stuff there that I wasn't aware of before - I really need to look more into what pacman and related systems can do. The old computer will definitely be kept around for some time while I get comfortable with the new one. Regards, Spencer