Switching from Manjaro to EndeavorOS, is there a way to preserve my home directory?
The title says it all, I'd like to switch my operating system and preserve most of my files. Any other info I should know before the move would be nice as well.
If /home is on a different partition just don't format it and set it to mount on the same place and you should be good to go. If it's not make a backup, then create a partition just for it, install your new system, restore the backup, and next time you won't need a backup.
Why? Serious question. I kind of understand /home, but why the others? I used to do it a bit, but now I don't bother. I never knew how big to make each partition, and have had problems where something like /boot fills up and freezes the system.
I have actually done this more than once. It works but you can end up with a few rough edges if you remove the Manjaro specific stuff. Nothing serious.
One thing I am curious about is what happens if you just add the EOS repos to Manjaro.
My biggest gripe with Manjaro is the way they hold packages back and the issues that causes with the AUR. If you had both, I imagine you would mostly just get the EOS packages for anything that was not Manjaro specific. If you also migrate the kernel to an EOS ( actually Arch ) package, most of the Manjaro damage would be contained.
Adding the eos-hooks package would make it report as EOS as well.
I might just give it a shot just to see what happens.
If you're frequently distro-hopping, I recommend using a seperate /home partition. I did that before I settled down, I can't begin to describe how convenient it was (especially if you use Flatpak).
To do this one could install the new distro on a new partition, boot to it, delete everything from the old installation except the hone directory, move your user to the base directory (/home/sorrybookbroke -> /sorrybookbroke) before editing your /etc/fstab and mounting the old partition to /home
This way, no external drive is needed like @Luci suggested. Of course, their suggestion is the easiest, but this is the one I personally chose.
I'd recommend starting fresh. Make a new one but don't delete the old one. You can then copy over what you want without bringing over anything like dotfiles with bad settings.