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Debian -- News -- Debian 13 "trixie" released
(www.debian.org)
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this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2025
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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From what I've read there's a way to export a list of installed packages (apps) and import them into the package manager again, but I've never tried it. Different distros have different package managers though, so that might not work. And even if they have the same package manager some distros name the package differently, so yeah. I don't usually switch distros, but if I did, I would definitely start afresh.
Packages and package managers differ between distros. If you are changing distros, you should not try to preserve your package list. You will need to reinstall them.
However, you can often preserve your configurations and customizations by migrating the dot files in your home directory (or the entire home directory).
This is why many people put /home on its own partition. They can then wipe and reinstall the root partition while preserving /home.