Switch Distributions Quickly | How to Backup and Restore Your Configurations

so I see this all the time people distro hopping switching from one distribution in the next and Linux I always discourage it I always say hey distros don't matter they're only a starting place and really I know what you're gonna do because I did that exact same thing you're gonna distro hop anyways you're gonna go from one distribution in the next and it is such a maddening experience when you first start out because sometimes you get it almost a hundred percent and then just one thing nags onion you jump to the next distribution I remember when I started Linux that's what I did and really what this video aims to do is make that life a heck of a lot easier and make it a lot easier on you as far as configurations and those types of things so that's what we're doing in this video we're taking that distro hop or taking all our settings from one distribution importing them into another distribution so let's jump into it so this is a pretty easy process what I'm gonna do is just go ahead and remote into my other computer download all of my dot config files and then we're just gonna take those dot config files and put them in this new PC that I just built I think last week so we're gonna drop them in there and see what happens because I think a lot of people are a little iffy about doing this and it's okay I just wanted to demonstrate it in this video but also when it comes to the duct config file zip it up back it to like a Dropbox or onedrive or you know pick your poison as far as cloud storage goes just zip it up put it up there and that way you can always give it back down now obviously I like to encrypt this file just because I don't trust cloud storage but you know do whatever you're comfortable with personally I like to drop mine on next cloud but I know some people don't have that luxury but with a let's get on the desktop and show you this process okay so let's go ahead and make our zip file we're gonna go ahead and remote into our old computer that is still running and we're just gonna zip this file up you don't have to do this this way you can just go to that computer and zip it and then put it on a flash drive if you like so we're gonna go to our main PC which I already already have an alias so now we're remoted into the main PC in there I want to zip this file up so we'll just do a tar create verbose zip file of config configs - backup dot tar file gzipped this will give it compression and put it in there I kind of tried to say all the stuff as I came out I might have been on wrong about one or two of those options but it just helps me remember when I'm doing it so with that we want to backup our config directory so we're gonna guitar this to the configs - backup TG tgz and then dot config we're already in our home directory here so we'll hit enter this will go through go through all my stuff and go okay what are all the settings for these programs so if I have a program installed it's gonna go through and go okay there's this one this one this one this one and it'll just back them all up really nice and neat really easy I did find this one uses Google Chrome and I'll actually need to go through and remove it but it has a lot of cash and other nastiness in it which I don't recommend backing up Chrome if you wanted to exclude this directory I probably would but everything else most other applications aren't nearly as heavy as Google Chrome is which we all know most people should be using chromium and actually on this machine I am using chromium so I would actually exclude this directory now but this is pretty much everything I've used on that PC in the past six months and every setting so that's why we go ahead and just do all of the dot config but it would be nice to go in here clean up any old programs you may not use anymore that'll definitely help speed this process up it also kind of keeps a nice clean install on your Linux box because if you're just installing a whole bunch of programs and you're like you know out of those 20 programs installed you purge 18 of them you probably should go back through and go ahead and clear out the cache especially if it's a program that holds credentials like I think I had Ram box and station installed on this PC at one time and I just went ahead and just completely removed all those because I don't want my credentials stored in dot config at all for those programs I don't use anymore so with that if we do ll you'll see that we have configs - backup the other one up there I think I made and then I realized I had too much stuff so it forced me to actually go back through and kind of clean it up so configs - backup is what we need so we'll go ahead and grab that folder and I'm just gonna kind of stay and command prompt for this I could easily remote into that PC and do it however let's let's get a little fancy with it so we're gonna remote in use an SCP grab that file and then pipe it back over one nine two one six eight 69.95 - backup file tgz and we're gonna go put it in our home directory so with that let's see what we get so it'll go through the interwebs grab that file through SCP pull it in now this is definitely the more advanced way of doing things however for this like I said this process you could just zip up using your favorite GUI extractor like archive manager would work just fine zip it all up put it into a file I like to use tar files because it retains permissions and not zip files which doesn't retain permissions so that's the difference between those two and then I would take that put it on my thumb drive walk it over to the next PC plug it in and then just simply extract it for the purpose of this video I can't really I guess I could take my camera and just kind of do that exact same process but I thought I'd show you the little more advanced way because this is just a little more fun especially when you have two pcs sitting next to each other and not actually having to plug anything into either one to grab data from them okay so we have it all downloaded here and what we can simply do is let's go ahead and do listing here we see the configs backup and we can just extract this so we're gonna go tar extract verbose file configs backup what this does is extracts all our stuff to this actual computer so all those settings inside will now be on here we have successfully restored our backup so let's go into duct config and we'll do a listing and if you look you should see like a Google Chrome because I know I haven't installed that here and there it is sure enough it grabbed all those files but so if I install anything else on here this see this machine's actually using chromium not Google Chrome and I know I can easily just install whatever program I haven't that I've had in there on this computer and then all my settings will be exactly the same and that simply is extremely powerful and definitely worth the wait that whole process took only a couple minutes and it saved us days of configuring especially when you have a ton of programs so there you have it all you ever wanted to know about dropping config files from one computer the next save you literally days of time doing this but with all that said let me know your thoughts down in the comment section below a big shout out to all my patrons without you I'd have a heck of a time making videos like this one I'd probably end up just being another hack on YouTube talking about the news of the day but instead we have this wonderful education content and it goes to all your guys's efforts and feedback but with all that I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Chris Titus Tech

Views: 31,502

Rating: 4.9221139 out of 5

Keywords: chris titus tech, linux, config, linux config files, linux kernel (software), configuración linux, kernel, configuration, ~./config, xconfig, rename files linux, config files, noyau linux, howto linux, clean arch linux, mx linux, web config, config file ssh, symlink linux, linux ssh, linux php, hide files in linux, arch linux tips, top 3 linux tips, linux tips, android kernel linux, bypass config, linux on ps4, switched to linux, top 3 linux tricks, how to, backup switch

Id: NXzY3OG6f3o

Length: 8min 25sec (505 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 06 2019