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this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2026
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Linux
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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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What is the most effective way to gather all of my personal stuff within Linux and it be as plug and play with every distro as possible?
Like if I wanted to infinitely distro hop to avoid this fucking Trainwreck right here, how would I easily and effectively ensure I can?
Can I take a set of folders?
Is there a backup format of some kind?
Is there a way to do this with installed programs in a way that can be dropped in?
btrfs. aside from useful things like on-the-fly compression and deduping, the thing has subvolumes; think partitions as folders, so you don't have to pre-size them. so e.g. your root (system) and home (user files and settings) are in separate subvolumes, which a) allows for easy backup/migrations and b) nothing stops you from installing a completely different OS (or several of those) in their respective subvolumes and then mount your home to each of those.
so you can have e.g. fedora and debian and arch, all on the same file system, using the same home, with all your shit available at all times and they don't interfere with each other.
That is wild. I assume that's part of the design from the get go with btrfs? That sounds like it would have to be.
I am currently using btrfs afaik, I'll have to check on this tomorrow.
yeah, e.g. fedora has by default a root and home subvolume. the caveat is, standard installers are either incapable of allowing you to install to a subvolume or are super-cumbersome, as that's currently not a top UX priority, so, a manual install process (with e.g. debootstrap and the like) is often needed.
Heard will be diving into all of this tomorrow, thanks for the info
Use a home dir on a separate partition and use nix or flatpak or some other distro agnostic package manager
Is the idea here that an agnostic package manager will install everything within home as well, and so when that's ported, and you have one of those PMs installed, it'll pick up where you left off or is there any specific protocol for importing something like that?
Pretty much what
nix(distinct fromNixOS) is.That being said I would recommend NOT to do that because you most likely need 10 specific packages at most. That should take you 15min tops to install with few minutes paying attention.
Just make sure
/homeis its own partition, or even disk, the distro hop if you want. You can also have in your~directory anappsdirectory where you keep binaries, AppImage, etc.For most people this is not a real concern.
I'll have to look into that. I've been daily driving Linux for maybe about 2 years now, and I've learned a bit and have messed around with it on and off for years, but I don't know it.
I'm at a point though where I know that there's going to be a time where I need to know to feel secure in avoiding bullshit like this post, malicious packages, general good security practices and what not, so y'all may see quite a bit of questions from me.
Thanks for the info
No worries, if you want you can "test" that via a virtual machine, even a container e.g. https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-webtop/ and see what you would genuinely miss.
It feels like our computer is very unique, very customized, but often it's done in very few key places, e.g. browser profile data, ~/.bashrc , etc and once you locate those, transitioning to any other system is way easier.
Good call on vms, thanks again
Nix is very heavily tied to systemd though
You just setup with the traditional partitioning scheme, so / and /home on separate partitions. You can have as many / partitions as you like with different distros on sharing the same /home partition. You still need to install all the packages you use in each distro, but your setup, personal and config file are consistent and preserved across all the distros.