That sounds like overkill, is your system really that complex that you need to automate it's installation? Usually when I reinstall my system I install the programs I remember and whenever I need something I install it.

My dotfiles are in a repo, but that only started when I started using i3 since the config is entirely a text file, before I just used the GUI to setup my system to look like I wanted it to.

Mint is an Ubuntu derivative like Pop, so the package manager is apt. Synaptic is a gui for apt.

If you want to learn and use ansible, go for it, but it might be a bit more than you need. If you are just wanting to install the apps you want, you can just write a quick bash script that installs all the apps you want.

The file structure should be the same in Mint as Pop, so restoring your dot files should be straight forward.

I wish you luck… but honestly, it sounds like a lot of painful steps to get the exact same thing that a solid config flake in NixOS would get you.

I use NixOS btw. ;)

You COULD probably do it like this if you want to gain experience with ansible. Otherwise it's total overkill. Just write down a list of must-have apps that you currently use and install them manually in the new system. It's always a nice opportunity to start fresh and clean.

Back up home and install the new distro from scratch.

If you like trying to take something simple and make it super complex for no real reason then might I suggest you don't?

My advice is to install a clean copy of the new distro and install new software as you need it. I do this to avoid the inevitable extra packages hanging around that I never use.

If you want to get real crazy you could switch your apt sources from pop to mint and tell apt to reinstall everything, but it will almost certainly fail at some point.

Nix os has a thing like that. Personally I use an arch distrobox. I have a backup of the distrobox image container that I can put on any computer and have all the apps and settings available.

Are you really comfortable with ansible? The only reason to use it for your case is that you want to learn it. Time you spend writing a playbook and testing it will be much longer than installing everything manually on a single machine. And it will be impossible to reuse it if you consider moving to not debian based distro later.

you can automate a lot of the basc profile stuff in your dotfiles with some automation such as https://github.com/anishathalye/dotbot to bootstrap a new install. it makes your new distro right at home, and if you combine this with github to store your dotfiles, you’ll also have a backup of your environment.

If you want to automate your system install Nix is a good one to look at, nowadays when I use a new system/wipe an existing one I can just install NixOS drop my config, sign into the things that need signing into and go

Obviously doesn't work as well if you're trying other distros but you can still use it on them

I would try the Distro on an external SSD first maybe?

PopOS is way more modern that Mint, so you may have negative effects from switching

I LOVE how portable flatpaks are, other than some lines from fstab i just want to set the rest of the system new anyway.

Thank fuck i don't use anything super complicated, so switching is a breeze for me.

You could make a live distro image(s) of your choice and use em on a pendrive with ventoy installed. (It's a bit tricky tho.)

How did you get on with this? I was looking to do this myself.

It's that one step closer to having a customised disposable distro

I'm pretty sure there's a easier way. I don't know what that way is but you likely don't need Ansible

I haven't tried it yet so anyone tell me if there are serious problems with it, but you can have a separate partition mounted at /home with your home folder so you can keep all your files and config files between distros